Weekends at Bellevue
Weekends at Bellevue Books
- ISBN13: 9780553807660
- Shape up: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
Julie Holland plotting she knew what crazy was.
Then she came to Bellevue.
New York City’s Bellevue Sickbay, the oldest broadcast sickbay in the United States, has a tradition of “serving the underserved” that dates back to 1736. For nine hectic years, Dr. Holland was the weekend physician in payment of Bellevue’s psychiatric emergency room, a one-woman front line charged with assessing and treating some of the city’s most vulnerable and troubled citizens, its forgotten and desolate—and its criminally insane. Deciding who gets locked up and who gets talked down would be an awesome responsibility for most people. For Julie Holland, it was just another day at the office.
In an absorbing memoir laced with humor, Holland provides an unvarnished look at life in the psych ER, recounting tales from her vast case files that are alternately terrifying, tragically comic, and profoundly tender: the serial killer, the naked man barking like a dog in Times Square, the schizophrenic begging for an injection of club soda to silent the voices in his head, the subway conductor who watched a young woman hard-pressed into the path of his train. As Holland comes to know, the degree to which someone can lose his or her mind is infinite, and each patient’s pain leaves a mark on her as well—as does the cancer battle of a fellow doctor who is both her best supporter and her most trusted mentor.
Writing with uncommon candor about her life both surrounded by and outside the sickbay—her professional struggles, private relationships, and the therapy sessions that help her crack the hard shell she’s formed to keep the pain at bay—Holland supplies not only a page-turner with all the quick-paced nearness of a TV medical drama but also a fascinating glimpse into the inner lives of doctors who struggle to maintain perspective in a world where sanity is in the eye of the beholder.Amazon.com Review
Amazon Exclusive: Julie Holland on Weekends at Bellevue
No one is immune from mental illness. After working at New York City’s Bellevue Sickbay for nine years, as the psychiatrist in payment of admissions at the psych E.R. on Saturday and Sunday nights, I came away knowing this for sure. Over the years, I admitted heiresses and art dealers, altar boys and college students, homecoming queens, studio executives, bankers, lawyers, correction officers, and the list goes on. No matter who you are, what you do for a living, how much money you have in the bank, or how often you go to church, circumstances can transpire that will result in you to Bellevue. This is one of the toughest lessons for our patients to learn.
My years at Bellevue taught me many things, life lessons I may possibly never have hoped to receive elsewhere, but the main take-home thought was this: revere your sanity, for it can be lost in the blink of an eye. Sometimes I saw the same patients repeatedly, alcoholics and addicts who were hitting bottom in fixed cycles, showing up when their funds ran out. Other times, but, I met patients with no psychiatric history, who finished up at Bellevue when a terrible break-up led to a suicide attempt, or a mutual cigarette at a bar led to a PCP-induced psychosis. There are so many ways in which a life can suddenly unravel, and many of my patients may possibly specify just when that ongoing to happen for them–whether it was joining the army, leaving home for college, or living through the death of their child.
Many of the people I encountered at Bellevue tried strenuously to convince me that they did not belong there. Or vice versa. A huge part of my job was learning how to separate the genuinely messed up from the fakers (some people really sought after to be admitted to Bellevue, if only for the promise of a clean bed and three meals a day), and to identify the people who had been misunderstood, misdiagnosed, who weren’t mentally ill at all. After a few years of Bellevue experiences below my belt, I developed a sixth sense for what real crazy looked like, sounded like, and yes, smelled like. One night a young man was brought in to the E.R. because he was found on a street corner preaching to passersby to give up their worldly possessions. I knew enough to listen and wait, and not rush to judgment, even though it might have seemed a no-brainer to admit him. Once I was able to draw him out, I learned that he had taken psychedelic mushrooms and then spent time in a Chelsea art gallery known as COSM, which I myself had been to and knew to be an intense, inspirational and potentially overwhelming experience, something that might well unhinge a person on mind-altering drugs. I spoke with him gently as his trip slowly ebbed, helping him to navigate his re-entry in the city sickbay where he had landed with no money or identification. He stayed in touch with me for months afterwards, grateful that I was there to protect him when he soared–but briefly–beyond the boundaries of normal behavior.
There is a diaphanous membrane between sane and insane. It is the flimsiest of barriers, and because any one of us can break through at any time, it terrifies us, causing us to turn our backs on those who remind us of this awkward reality. But spending so much time with people who marched out of the lockstep of sanity has made me less forgiving of the way the mentally ill are ostracized and shunned. We owe them something better. And we should remember that the barrier separating “them” from “us” is not near as secure as we might reckon.–Julie Holland
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Book: Weekends at Bellevue by Julie Holland (being released in October 2009, I read an advanced reading copy)
About: Holland chronicles her nine years as an emergency room psychiatrist in New York’s Bellevue Sickbay’s psychiatric ER.
Pros: Privacy / disclaimer in beginning. Fascinating, sad, scary and amusing tales and patients.
Cons: Even with the included glossary, the many acronyms can be a bit much.
Grade: B
Rating: 4 / 5
It is NOT your average doctor who pulls aside the Wizard of Oz curtains and reveals herself as a fallible human being, wrestling with her own issues all the even as taking the reader on an E-Ticket (the BEST rides at Disneyland) ride through her 9 years as ER doc on the weekends at Bellevue. Fabulously courageous and incredibly heartfelt, it is a testament to what it really takes this person to navigate, personally and professionally, caring for those who, for whatever reason, are severely mentally ill in so many different manifestations, and attempting to solve each puzzle as it lands in the ER. It also highlighted the thin line between sanity and lunacy that so many successfully walk with the help of therapy and tablets – really bringing mental health to a level that it should be – acknowledged as just another part of life and not something to hide or be ashamed of. I really listened to the audio version and loved hearing Dr. Holland read it herself – adding a “scrape n’ sniff” dimension that really works for this very real, often amusing, often questioning, sometimes sad & frustrating book. A relaxing read it’s not – more like a wild ride – so strap on your seat belt!
Rating: 5 / 5
“Weekends at Bellevue” by Dr. Julie Holland was one of the best books I have read in a long time. Dr. Holland shares her intimate life, medical insights and private feelings with tremendous passion, humor and a laser insight into a world few of us have any contact with…….if we are lucky. I have mutual this memoir with several friends. I suggest that you do the same. It is a VERY excellent and very compelling read. I wish all doctors had the same level of caring, compassion and intellect with an ability to look beyond the evident.
Rating: 5 / 5
If you guess this book to be some kind of ‘report’ about a psychiatrist’s work at the emergency you may be disappointed. If you guess this to be a book about how one, or Julie Holland in particular, would be the *perfect* doctor for people that end up at the psych ER in Bellevue, you will not like everything you read.
This is an autobiography, written with a level of honesty that many of us would not dare have with our therapist. That way it is a fantastic book. Julie’s shocking honesty about how she had to learn to become more human is incredible. In the book she evolves over time from the hard person to in the end become the person who may possibly no longer be hard enough to keep working there. She too needed therapy and she is open about it. That is, I reckon, why it is a book that mixes her private stuff and the Bellevue nights throughout the book. This too is what make this book so valuable: the raw honesty about herself. The raw honesty about all of us.
Read this book for yourself. Reading this book will make you feel so normal. I urge this if you ever reckon that you too may be crazy, get depressed or you sometimes dread your own thoughts. Julie’s openness showed me that I’m pretty normal and that it is really OK to have to deal with my own demons. This book changed my life, or at least my view on life for the better. Thank you Julie.
I would have never picked up a book like this if I would not have met Julie Holland. It is not my field after all. Maybe it is written for people like you and me, not the medical professionals, so read on, you are human
. In Barns & Nobles it is stored below medical, to me it feels more like it fits below “learn about yourself” type of works.
I read it as an audio book, read by the author. Many authors are not excellent readers. Julie Holland pulls it off though. I guess her past as a singer helps her deliver the needed vocal richness.
If you want to learn more listen to the correlated interview by Terry Yucky on Fresh Air [...]
Oh and a lot of it is plain fun to read.
Bart
Rating: 5 / 5
I know from my many years of work experience in the field of mental health that there are many services available for people suffering with various forms of mental illness. I share this only to provide that there is some light at the other end of Dr. Holland’s bleak tunnel.
Julie Holland, M.D. captures the ‘life’ of the Psych ER at Bellevue in what appears to be a most competent manner. Working in `mental health’ is often chaotic, often frustrating, often heartbreaking, but the exhilaration one feels just stepping into that other zone is quite unbelievable. It is not for everyone, but for those of us who find our place in `mental health,’ it is like nothing else. The caveat is, as Doctor Holland well describes, one must know when it is time to be O.T. D. [Out The Door].
Doctor Holland writes, `….give me someone in psychic pain, whose soul was aching, and I feel fully equipped to involve myself.’ [Page 32] She reveals quite a lot about herself, but Holland also seems to know when to discontinue allowing the reader into her private life. I do not fault her for this, at all. It is simply an observation. Additionally, it seems as if Holland ‘comes of age,’ as it were, even as at Bellevue. She goes from being a ‘hot dog’ ['know-it-all' ER Psych Doc, a 'T&R' -- Handle and Release doc to a more compassionate one during her nine year tenure at Bellevue].
Dr. Holland appears to know her medications. Really, at one top, she describes herself as a psychopharmacologist. Even as this should not be overlooked, there is much more to psychiatry than writing an apt prescription. Teamwork is extremely vital in providing proper mental health services, but one senses that Holland either doesn’t have the time for this or prefers to ‘ride solo.’
This is not a fantastic book, but it is certainly a book that will allow a reader some insight into the world of the Psych ER, as well as the world of those who suffer from severe mental illness. In Dr. Holland’s case, it also allows takes the reader on her ‘journey.’ It seems that not until she, herself, gains some insight, as well as a meaningful private life that she is able to form professionally meaningful relationships.
Dr. Holland and I worked with the same individuals [same diagnoses]. But, when she sees them, they are floridly psychotic. When I saw these people [I am referring to the diagnoses], they were supposedly `ready’ for vocational assessment, training and placement. Many times, the stress of work readiness was too much to handle. We also saw our share of people deteriorate. It is often an emotionally awkward experience. Dr. Holland shares this, as well.
There are sections of this book that made me wonder why Dr. Holland was so confrontational with her patients. Ordinarily, this often makes an already messed up person that much more belligerent. Additionally, it appears as if it takes her own experience in therapy to learn how to ‘listen,’ really ‘listen,’ to her patients.
Parts of this book made me speculate whether this is a `pilot’ for next season’s TV. Really, this would not be such a terrible thought. Too many individuals are terribly fearful of the psychiatrically disabled populace. Our media tends to sensationalize only the most horrendous of acts committed by some of this populace. Most people do not see their despair, their being alone, their utter hopelessness, their family estrangement. Julie Holland, M.D. will result in the reader into this world. Dr. Holland also provides a most helpful glossary.
[Yes, the paperwork is enormous, and we have to constantly document, document and document. Yes, we also must keep-up with new computer software.]
`Instead of integrating them among us, we shutter our psychiatric patients away so that we will not have to be reminded of all that can go incorrect with our own minds and brains.’ [Page 294]
Although I urge this book, readers should note that there is some strong [foul] language and sexually explicit scenes/statements.
[-4]
Rating: 4 / 5