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You Don't Have to Be Mad to Work Here by Benji Waterhouse


Rating:

5 Stars


Themes:

Memoir, Mental Health, Non-Fiction, Psychiatry, Humour 


Thoughts:

I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily. This book is an amazing read and has given me a much deeper insight into the kind of professional world I hope to be joining (mental health). The first consultant hinting there must be something wrong to want to work there made me laugh as it’s something we used to joke about in my course. Benji shows us what it's like to go from a new graduate right through to his consultancy training. I appreciated that he didn’t shy away from his own experiences of burnout and mental health suffering as more books like this help to contribute to de-stigmatisation of mental ill health. I’m glad we got to get one or two pieces of some sort of closure but I understand that Benji himself didn’t get to complete the process of any of his patients being moved regularly so it makes sense we don’t always find out if his patients are still struggling or are managing better now. I also liked that this is a more recent book which also managed to tackle the impact of COVID on working in the NHS and specifically people’s mental health at the time. Especially with knowing that many self-report remote studies completed over that period showed an impact on most participants so seeing (even in one little paragraph) the impact on a few of his patients personally helped contextualize it all a little more. 


Favourite Quote:

"Earlier in my training I used to worry about my patients affecting me, but but now now I realise the far bigger problem is when compassion-fatigued psychiatrists get to the point that they don't."

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