Hope Jahren

• Jahren has publicly identified herself as having bipolar disorder. In her 2016 memoir Lab Girl, she wrote about her episodes of mania and bipolar disorder publicly for the first time. [2]
• She later said that she had spent about a decade hiding how ill she was before eventually deciding to include that part of her life in the book. Jahren has said she wanted readers to understand bipolar disorder as a real illness with treatments and medication, while also conveying how real the experiences themselves felt to her. [2][3]

• Jahren has described manic periods marked by little need for food or sleep, a flood of ideas, and an overwhelming urge to record her thoughts. During one episode, she filled cassette after cassette with ideas because her hands were shaking too much to write. [1]
• She has also described the aftermath of mania as a severe depressive state. In Lab Girl, she writes about waking into a “gray sadness” accompanied by silent crying and numbness. She has said that although she came to understand these experiences as symptoms of illness, they felt completely real to her. [1][2]

• Jahren has described eventually receiving psychiatric treatment and medication that helped stabilize her moods. She has continued to describe bipolar disorder as an illness for which treatment and medication have been important. [8][2]
• During pregnancy, Jahren had to stop medications that posed risks to the developing fetus. She describes becoming severely unwell, spending periods in hospital, and receiving electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). Later in the pregnancy, she was able to resume medication. [1]

• Jahren has described recovery as a long process rather than a single turning point. She has said that after spending roughly a decade hiding how ill she was, she then spent another decade “doing the work of getting well.” [3]
• She has also described being able to continue functioning professionally even when she was very unwell, which she says partly reflected the flexibility of academic work. [3]

• Jahren has said that one reason she wrote openly about bipolar disorder was to show the reality of what the illness feels like from inside the experience. She has emphasized that bipolar disorder is a real illness and has pushed back against romanticizing it as a source of creativity or special ability. [2][4]
• She has also argued against reducing a person to a psychiatric diagnosis. Speaking at a Johns Hopkins mood-disorders symposium, Jahren described bipolar disorder as something she lives with rather than something that defines who she is. [5]

“It may be chemicals in my brain but it doesn’t change just how real the experiences were for me.”

— Hope Jahren [2]