Published in 2009
10 hours and 53 minutes
Julie Holland, M.D., is a psychiatrist specializing in psychopharmacology. An assistant professor of psychiatry at NYU School of Medicine, she spent her weekends running the psychiatric emergency room at Bellevue Hospital for nine years. She is the editor of Ecstasy: The Complete Guide–A Comprehensive Look at the Risks and Benefits of MDMA. She lectures widely and has been quoted in Time, Harper’s, Slate, the Los Angeles Times, and The Wall Street Journal. Holland has appeared as a medical expert regarding mental illness and drug use on numerous television shows, including Today and Good Morning America. She runs a private practice in New York City and lives with her husband and two children in the Hudson Valley.
What is this book about?
His name was Joshua Silver. He was 23 years old, educated, and had an impressive vocabulary. The NYPD had found Joshua Silver naked in Times Square, barking like a dog.
It was just another night for Julie Holland, the attending doctor in the world-famous Bellevue Hospital’s psychiatric emergency room. Every weekend for nine years, it was Holland’s job to evaluate and treat all patients admitted, from the schizophrenic to the bipolar to the traumatized, from the homicidal to the suicidal to victims of unthinkable crimes.
In this absorbing memoir, Holland provides a rare behind-the-scenes glimpse into her life-altering experience at Bellevue, recounting stories of the patients who moved, terrified, fascinated, and amused her, the patients who helped her grow in ways she never imagined. Along the way she documents her life outside the hospital – her relationship with her husband and the births of their children; her own therapy sessions, which helped her finally crack through the tough exterior she had formed; and her close bond with her best friend and mentor, Lucy, a fellow doctor whose battle with cancer left Holland forever changed.
