Kay Redfield Jamison (born June 22, 1946) is an American clinical psychologist and writer. Her work has centered on bipolar disorder, which she has had since her early adulthood. She holds a post of Professor of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and is an Honorary Professor of English at the University of St Andrews.
Jamison began her study of clinical psychology at University of California, Los Angeles in the late 1960s, receiving both B.A. and M.A. degrees in 1971. She continued on at UCLA, receiving a C.Phil. in 1973 and a Ph.D. in 1975, and became a faculty member at the university. She went on to found and direct the school's Affective Disorders Clinic, a large teaching and research facility for outpatient treatment. She also took sabbatical leave to study zoology and neurophysiology at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.
After several years as a tenured professor at UCLA, Jamison was offered a tenured post as Professor of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, perhaps the first time such a post had been offered to a psychologist. Jamison has given visiting lectures at a number of different institutions while maintaining her professorship at Hopkins. She was distinguished lecturer at Harvard University in 2002 and the Litchfield lecturer at the University of Oxford in 2003. She was Honorary President and Board Member of the Canadian Psychological Association from 2009–2010.