Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

As a practicing emergency physician I was curious to read this book. The good: Dr. Holland is clearly a competent writer and her descriptions of psychiatric patients in the emergency setting are spot on. She is also transparent about her limitations as a physician, especially regarding empathy, and her personal struggles when faced with certain patient types. The bad: The book does come across as indulgent. I was much more interested in the professional content than I was the details of her personal life. Further, in my humble opinion, she seems too enthralled with pharmacologic management of the human psyche. I suppose one should expect this from a psychopharmacologist, but I am very much a believer in the power of caring, see book Hippocrates Shadow (Newman) and in the perils of Overdiagnosis (Brownlee) and Overtreatment (Welch). We are too quick to abandon non-pharmacologic approaches to wellness, and too quick to look for answers in a pill bottle. The ugly: I find her sexual escapades during her training, including an affair with a married physician, to be exceptionally base. In all my years of training (medical school and two residencies) there was one rumor of a tryst that was wholly frowned upon and nearly shut down all sharing of scarce call rooms in the hospital. The vast majority of medical trainees keep their heads down, work very hard, and avoid all such nonsense. I want all laypersons reading her book to understand her behavior to be the gross exception that it is. And I’d like to point out that sexual harassment is a problem across industries, including in the house of medicine; that she responds by having sex with those who harass her perpetuates a huge problem for women in our society!