Books like Weekends at Bellevue: Nine Years on the Night Shift at the Psych E.R.

I don't usually take the time to write a review, but as a psychology major and a human being, I was very disappointed by the actions of Julie Holland as she recounts them in this memoir.The stories of patients in the ER were often interesting, but I was consistently bothered by how politically incorrect Holland was in her writing. In regards to mental illness, she commonly used the words "crazy" (a highly stigmatized word) and "insane" (which is not even a word used in psychology, it is used in courtrooms only - to be determined not guilty due to insanity - and has never been an accepted word in the psychology community). Although I am aware that what was taught in a psychology classroom in the late 1980s is vastly different in comparison to today, a physician with a doctorate and a specialization in psychology has no excuse to be using such degrading and stigmatized words to describe her patients. These are people suffering from mental disorders and she would be ridiculing them with other doctors, nurses, EMS workers and police officers - sometimes while she was right in front of the patient. I found the attempts at humour to be cruel and the stereotypical conception of America's past State Hospitals being set up as a sort of 'zoo' for people to come view and ridicule the mentally ill was brought to mind. It was painful to read, but I continued.The author also treated some of her patients very poorly and unethically, at one point giving an arrested addict methadone to "shut him up", lying to a patient and validating their delusions in order to make them easier to deal with, and even using seductive strategies to gain the compliance of a patient. The level of sexism in this memoir is sickening - all more so when taking into account that this author is a woman. The presence of patriarchy is readily apparent in every page of this book. Holland repeatedly makes a point of having to act "more manly" as she believes that it is the only way to gain respect from her coworker, male EMS workers, and the hospital and city policemen she comes into contact with. She also asserts this dominance on patients in inappropriate ways - one time going as far as to give a patient a cavity search for an alleged razor blade (despite the fact that this is against protocol as it would have cut her finger if there were one hidden in the patient's cavity - something a MD should know better than doing) all in an attempt to gain the approval of the male police officers that had brought the patient in. This is something she later admits as a sadistic act against the patient, but she makes no admittance of remorse for her reasoning behind it. The author demoralizes herself and other women consistently throughout the book. She tells herself that she needs to "man up" when she is feeling emotional, insinuating that it is a uniquely female experience to express emotion and that it is beneficial to act like a male whom, according to Holland, does not express his emotions. Although Holland is respectful of a transgendered patient brought in, calling the patient by their preferred gender, she linguistically segregates transgendered individuals from the rest of the population in subtle ways such by referring to more than one transgendered person as "all them" "some of them" etc, which may sound innocent but when in the context it seemed quite inappropriate.There are other things in this novel that bothered me quite a bit as well. The level of professionalism we uphold to medical professionals is shattered when you read Holland's stories of having sex with other resident doctors in the call room, drinking before starting her shift at work, letting her personal pride get in the way of her properly taking care of a patient, ridiculing patients (patients who, voluntarily or involuntarily, have been brought to Bellevue to get help for their medical and psychological problems), and it is disappointing to read about a well educated professional that is so completely and utterly politically incorrect, reaffirming the stigmas against mental illness rather than working to disassemble them, and expressing such blatant misogyny. I am an avid lover of psychology. I believe it is every as bit important to our health system as any other medical field is. I believe that psychologists should express empathy towards the patients in and out of the workplace; a person with a mental illness should be treated as any other person would be. A person with schizophrenia that is having delusions is not funny, it is not ethical or even humane to laugh at their suffering. A person threatening suicide should be taken seriously, not received with skepticism because they have a history of drug abuse or homelessness, and they should not be denied a bed based on suspicions that they are lying when a middle classed man or woman claiming the same suicidal tendencies is given a bed without hesitation. This memoir made me disappointed in Bellevue hospital, in whatever hole in the educational system let such a misogynistic, uncaring, and sadistic woman become a medical doctorate, and most of all, it left me disgusted with Julie Holland. I express my deepest condolences to any human being that was ever left in her care and I hope that her actions did not damage their mental health in any way. I hope, for their own sakes, that Holland's patients (or anyone with a history of mental illness, for that matter) do not read this book as this view into Bellevue Psych ER is enough to eliminate any hopes these patients may have to get help at Bellevue.Mostly, I hope that things have changed enough in the past two decades that doctors are educated enough to never, ever, act like this towards human beings. I hope that they can be compassionate and empathetic with their patients. I hope that they can be sensitive of issues surrounding misogyny, of stigmas against mental illness, and of discrimination towards transgendered individuals; I hope that current doctors, and doctors of the future, can work together to eliminate these from ever becoming an issue in the workplace.