(Image from Barnes & Noble)

"I thought I knew what crazy was. Then I came to Bellevue."

- Julie Holland, M.D.

Every day, New York City's sickest, most pathetic residents troop through the doors of Bellevue Hospital's psychiatric ER. It's a desperate parade of sociopathic inmates, abandoned street folk, suicidal everymen and psychopaths of every stripe. Some want a listening ear, others a safe place to sleep; some enter souped up on drugs, others have been off their meds for months; some want real treatment, others desire only the free painkillers. Each shift brings fresh neuroses, new problems, unique challenges. In short, Bellevue's the perfect workplace for a hotshot young psychiatrist like Julie Holland. An adrenaline junkie who loves nothing more than playing with fire, she gets a sometimes frightening, ofttimes enlightening, always fascinating up-close look at how the brain functions - and malfunctions.

Weekends at Bellevue (which will be published in October) details all the crazy Holland encountered in the 9 years she spent treating patients in the ER, as well as the path that led a would-be rock star to become an honored psychiatrist, professor and author. She describes her growth from a nervous "third-year" who "spent most of my time feeling like I was in either a gory movie or a well-written medical drama" (31-32) to a more confident resident and finally, to an experienced psychiatrist and expert psychopharmocologist. Along the path, she encounters her share of dangerous patients, harmless whack jobs, successes and failures. Her experiences oscillate from outrageous to hilarious to heartbreaking. What makes the book most profound, however, are the truths Holland discovers about humanity and about herself. By the time burnout forces her out of the chaos of emergency medicine into the relative calm of private practice, Holland has come to a startling conclusion:

The reality is this: All of us, to some degree, are mentally ill. We get paranoid, anxious, depressed, and insomniac. We alternate between delusions of grandeur and crippling self-doubt, we suffer from paralyzing fears and embarrassing neuroses. We have compulsions to do things we know we shouldn't, and there are millions of us with addictions, whether to gambling, drinking, dieting, or playing Second Life. Every one of us has psychiatric symptoms, many of them serious enough to warrant attention, even if they are not incapacitating. But few of us are willing to let on that we are suffering. This secrecy and shame compounds our avoidance of those who have been officially diagnosed as mentally ill (293).