When Emmy award-winning newscaster Jane Pauley learned she had been diagnosed with bipolar depression at age 50, the iconic journalist did what she has always done — she told the story to help other people.
Pauley detailed her diagnosis, treatment and return to work in her 2005 memoir "Skywriting: A Life Out of the Blue" as a way to focus more attention on the disorder and diminish the shame of mental illness. Pauley has called her decision to talk openly about the bipolar diagnosis "the easiest decision I ever made." That's one of many reasons APA President Nadine J. Kaslow, PhD, invited Pauley to keynote APA's 2014 Annual Convention in Washington, D.C., Aug. 7–10.
"One of the best ways to reduce stigma is for people to share their stories as well as their successes, and she is a wonderful model for that," says Kaslow. "She has helped bring attention to this critically important topic, one that is extremely relevant to psychologists."
Pauley's most recent passion will also resonate with psychologists, adds Kaslow. Pauley is bringing to light stories of people who have reinvented themselves mid- or late-in-life in her NBC "Today" show/AARP series "Life Reimagined Today" and in her 2014 book "Your Life Calling: Reimagining the Rest of Your Life." She profiles such adventurers as Gid Pool, a Sarasota, Florida, native who became a professional comedian in his 60s and Jerry Leener, of Silver Spring, Maryland, who left a partnership at a global accounting firm to become a volunteer emergency medical technician at age 55. Her hope is that people like Pool and Leener will inspire others to seek fulfillment in their so-called retirement years.
"Except for the lucky few, most of us spent the first phase of our working lives doing work we had to do," Pauley writes in "Your Life Calling." "Our generation is the first to realize there could be a second phase of our working lives, and that it might be different. What we're looking for is work that fits our personal needs and fulfills our wants."
While most people learn they are bipolar in their teens or 20s, Pauley's is a rare case. Her mood swings and other symptoms first appeared after Pauley took steroids for hives and a mild antidepressant, both of which can be dangerous for someone predisposed to bipolar disorder. After learning of her diagnosis, Pauley says she recognized her own hypomania right away — she had recently bought a house on a whim and was generating more ideas than she and those around her could manage. "I wasn't swinging from the chandelier," she writes in "Skywriting." "It was a spectrum of agitation that could pass before your eyes in a single conversation. But the turbulence affected the whole family."
Pauley co-hosted the NBC "Today" show from 1976 to 1989. In addition, she was the founding co-anchor of "Dateline NBC" and hosted the "The Jane Pauley Show." Pauley and her husband, "Doonesbury" cartoonist Garry Trudeau, have three grown children.
