"People go mad in idiosyncratic ways," said author and psychologist Kay Redfield Jamison Sept. 18 in Bailey Hall. "So perhaps it is not surprising that as a meteorologist's daughter I found myself gliding, flying, now and again lurching through cloud banks and ethers, past stars and across fields of ice crystals."

This is what Jamison remembers, she said, from one of her earlier episodes of mania -- when her mind took her, thrillingly, on a solo flight to the outskirts of Saturn.

"Even now, I can see in my mind's rather peculiar eye an extraordinarily shadow and shifting of light; inconstant but ravishing colors laid out across miles of circling rings; and the almost imperceptible, somehow surprisingly pallid, moons of this Catherine wheel of a planet."

Jamison, professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and co-director of the Johns Hopkins Mood Disorders Center, gave the talk "Personal and Professional Reflections on Mental Illness" as this year's Robert E. Hamlisch M.D. Memorial Lecture. She chronicled her own struggle with manic depressive illness (also called bipolar disorder) in a 1995 best-selling memoir, "An Unquiet Mind."

Bipolar disorder and other mental illnesses -- depression, eating disorders, anxiety, suicide -- are common throughout society, she said -- including on college campuses. Ritch Savin-Williams, Cornell professor of human development, estimated in his introduction that as many as 1,200 Cornell students could be living with bipolar illness.

But the line between intense moodiness and disorder is fuzzy, and it's not easy to judge one's own sanity, Jamison said. And while medications and psychotherapy are effective treatments, the medications often come with side effects. They also take away the beguiling, intensely pleasurable manias that can become addictive -- despite the destruction they cause.

"It took me far too long to realize that lost years and relationships cannot be recovered. The damage to oneself and to others cannot always be put right again," Jamison said. "And the freedom from control imposed by medication loses its meaning when the only alternatives are death and insanity."

Jamison's decision to make her illness public wasn't easy, she said. She risked losing her professional licensing, her credibility as a researcher and teacher. But keeping her illness secret simply felt dishonest.

"There was much, much, much uncomfortable silence," she said. "And there were remarks that were variously: funny, insensitive, generous, wonderful or cruel. The responses were, in short, very human."

Her colleagues and superiors at Johns Hopkins gave their full support. Her family drew closer together. Her gardener, upon reading the Washington Post story that made her illness public, said, "Gosh, Dr. Jamison, if I'd known you had that kind of problem I would've planted more subdued colors."

"All things considered, speaking out about my illness has had a freeing effect," Jamison said. "I'm much more able to say what I really feel now. ... there is relief in the honesty."

Her advice for those struggling with mental illness, and those who care about them, was to learn about the subject and educate others. And know that there is hope.

"Bipolar illness is a terrible illness -- anybody who's had it knows it's agonizing, it's a nightmare," she said. "But it's a great, great time to get it. … We know so much more about the neurobiology, the genetics of how the brain is structured ... the research is going very rapidly indeed. They are treatable disorders.

"The important thing is to get treated," she said. "If you're concerned about someone else, reach out with compassion, and with education."

The lecture was sponsored by the College of Human Ecology, Gannett Health Services, Family and Children's Service of Ithaca, Cornell Minds Matter, the Finger Lakes Chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness and Cornell University Religious Work.