You Don’t Have to Be Mad to Work Here: A Psychiatrist’s Life

A woman in a wedding dress arrives at the hospital looking for Harry Styles.

A lorry driver with schizophrenia believes he’s got a cure for coronavirus.

A depressed man hides his profession from his GP due to stigma.

Most of the psychiatric cases in this book are his patients. Some of them are family. One of them is him.

Unlocking the doors to the psych ward, NHS psychiatrist Dr Benji Waterhouse provides a fly-on-the-padded-wall account of medicine’s most mysterious and controversial specialty.

Why would anyone in their right mind choose to be a psychiatrist? Are the solutions to people’s messy lives really within medical school textbooks? And how can vulnerable patients receive the care they need when psychiatry lacks staff, hospital beds and any actual cures?

You Don’t Have to Be Mad to Work Here explores these complicated questions from both sides of the doctor’s desk.

Dr Benji Waterhouse is a front-line NHS doctor specializing in psychiatry. He is also an award-winning stand-up comedian who performs sell-out shows at the Edinburgh Festival. He has written for theGuardian and Independent, and was included in a list of ’Inspiring Psychiatrists’ by the Royal College of Psychiatrists. You Don’t Have to Be Mad to Work Here is his first book.

www.linktr.ee/dr_benji
www.instagram.com/doctor_benjis
www.twitter.com/doctor_benji