User:Jtharrison

Hypomanic (sub-titled sub-titled Mad in England, A Memoir), an autobiography published in 2008 and written by Victor J Kennedy, describes the author's experiences with hypomania. The title is a reference to hypomania, a mood state characterized by persistent and pervasive elevated or irritable mood, and thoughts and behaviors that are consistent with such a mood state.

Book
In the book (2008 edition: ISBN 978-1-84747-4193), Kennedy describes his experience with the depths of a mental illness, his own character failings and how he managed to survive a nervous breakdown while completing university.

His honesty in presenting psychotic episodes which often do not show him in a positive light are a striking aspect of the book. This has split some readers and critics, with a few suggesting Kennedy is self-absorbed, indulgent and unappealing, with others praising him for producing a honest and unrestricted narrative of an often stigmatized disorder.

As an autobiographical account of experiences with mental illness, it can be seen as an inheritor to books such as Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar and Elizabeth Wurtzel's Prozac Nation. Hypomanic sits alongside Susanna Kaysen's Girl, Interrupted, a book published in the same year as Prozac Nation: both were written by young women describing their experiences of mental illness. Kennedy's mental illness is known as Bipolar disorder, which has not often been written about in the first person narrative.