Great read, really enjoyed it! Great insight into a psychiatrist world. Very funny and moving. Definitely recommend if you enjoyed This is going to hurt.

I liked this book for two good reasons: the sense of humor that constantly made me laugh out loud and the true, raw story of what it is like to work as a physiotherapist for the NHS. So many nerve-gripping and intense stories were shared, making my heart feel it, and my mind is still wondering and questioning the UK health support systems for both the patients and health professionals. I admire the mental strength that goes behind these tough decision-makings. The doctor not only shared his true story but also other work colleagues' stories. I'm grateful for the opportunity to read something so raw and honest. Thank you to the author and NetGalley; I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

I really loved this book. It was very honest about the constraints of working in the NHS and very engaging. Despite the complex topic it was really easy to read and all the characters were bought to life in a sensitive and empathetic way.

Absolutely wonderful book that really sheds light on the realities of the UK's mental health system and how it is struggling under the pressures of increased need and lack of funding. Benji has a very enjoyable narrative voice that shines through. I look forward to anything else he decides to write!

Great read, sad but unfortunately true. A wonderfully written account of what the NHS mental health service is like and also up against.

Very readable, fascinating but also depressing to see how most of his problems are due to lack of funding for the NHS. I've read a few medical memoirs now and they all have the same theme of overwork, stress and struggling to do a good job.

Thanks to PRH as always for the early access, I very much enjoyed this and really hope that everyone gives it a read as it’s such a fantastic book. It’s a very insightful and interesting account of what it’s really like to work as an NHS psychiatrist, highlighting all the challenges that doctors face. It’s humorous and funny, but also heart breaking to learn about some of the true stories patients and staff have been through. Benji’s writing style is relaxed and easy to read, and is never bogged down in technical terms that no one apart from doctors would understand. It gives you just the right amount of information for you to understand the job and speciality. I genuinely couldn’t put it down, it's brilliant and I can’t wait for this to be published!

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6081050187

Highly enjoyable book, great insight into working for the NHS and mental health services.
Full review available on Goodreads.

A bitter-sweet memoir written by a young doctor specializing in psychiatry. It´s hilarious, it´s sad, it´s horrifying, it´d depressing. All at once.
The author tells us what it´s like to work in an underfinanced and understaffed system (that´s an euphemism big time!), a system that should care about the most vulnerable members of our society, yet it mostly struggles to somehow manage the situation. The system is on the brink of collapsing, and it looks like nobody cares.
A few facts:
* "(...) mental illness accounts for 28% of the nations overall disease burden, it receives just 12% of NHS funding." Oh well, this should come as a big shock, but somehow we know that already.
* "(...) the number of psychiatric beds in England has fallen from 67.000 in 1988 to just 18.000 in 2019." Now this is something that deserves a big WTF moment.
* "Sometimes patients are sent up to 300 miles away to the closest hospital bed. In 2019 psychiatric patients travelled the equivalent of twenty-two times around the world for out-of-area beds - can you imagine us making someone on crutches do that?" - yes, I can.
* ECT, known as shock therapy, where they run some electricity through your brain is still on. Nope, this isn't a joke. On a private note - while I was at university ages ago, we were told that frying brain is a thing of the past, which was a great relief. Twenty years later I met someone recently then released from a mental institution in Ireland who claimed that she had received the ECT therapy. I wanted to call her a liar. Now this. Once again it looks to me like Eastern Europe is far more advanced and more civilized than Western Europe. And the funny thing is that there is no proof at all that the shock therapy works!
* 6.000 tonnes of untouched food ends up in a bin every year, and this is just in hospitals!

The reality is that NHS is somehow a toxic corporation to work in. They aim to help people, but they rarely do. Despite some amazing people working there, despite the efforts of many it's not working. As Benji said the "work was making me ill" and yet he mustn´t have said to his superiors openly what and why, because he would have gotten a black stain on his record. Honesty is NOT appreciated at all. So if you tell the truth about working more hours than the European Working Time Directive allows, they will sack you. No wonder they haven´t got staff.

I´m sorry if I made you feel like this book is depressing, grim and boring. It´s NOT. I found it hilarious. Not to spoil the funny parts for you, let me just tell you that in the Acknowledgments the author thanks... "the makers of Jaffa Cakes and Yorkshire Tea for keeping me nourished and focused during the writing process." How sweet. I have never ever read thanks to tea and cookies. I love it, do you?

There seems to be a lot of books out there at the moment with the Adam Kay-esque gallows humour about working in the NHS. This one seemed to start out quite similar and the footnotes were becoming distracting (Especially when read on a Kindle and you have to keep flicking back and forth to get the rest of the detail).
However I found Benji's gentleness and scathing honesty came through well and his own personal problems were well interwoven through the book. I found myself really hoping for his own recovery as well as his patients.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Thoroughly enjoyed this. Well written, entertaining and funny. Sheds some more light on our increasingly falling apart health service. Makes you very grateful for all that our health workers do under very difficult circumstances. Wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this to others.

A really enjoyable and refreshing book following the life and tribulations of a junior doctor psychiatrist working in the NHS.
The author shows what life is really like working as a doctor on a psychiatric ward in the NHS and the pressures and restrictions placed upon them, largely due to lack of bed availability.
The author has a very relaxed and humorous aspect to his writing which meant the book was easy to read and one you didn't want to put down!
I hope the author has more books in him as these would be very well received.
Highly recommended.

Really enjoyed this memoir and some of the stories the author tells. I do think he spent a little too much time on frivolous stuff, but the bulk of the book was very engaging. Would recommend.

This was an amazing read that was an In depth coverage of the nhs mental health treatment. Funny and heartwarming

Dr Benjamin - call me Benji - Waterhouse is a psychiatrist and this is his story from his first day as a new doctor through the next few years of his career. It is raw, it is honest, it is funny, and it is heartbreaking. It is also brilliantly written.

Having worked in the NHS and in Mental Health Trusts on the non clinical side, a lot of the problems described by Dr W are familiar but this is a real eye opener on how clinicians have to bury their empathy (maybe their humanity) to get through the day and treat the number of patients they have to see. It’s easy to say that they should see less and spend more quality time with each individual but given the staff shortages and the huge waiting lists, this is not feasible. While going through various case studies to show what he is dealing with, Dr W also reveals issues raised in his own therapy. The book ends with the coronavirus outbreak.

There are scary parts and astonishing parts and moving, gentle parts and each are written with great skill. When shown into a windowless cupboard where he cannot escape if a patient attacks him, he is reassured by his consultant that there is panic alarm. They press it and wait - and wait… when they go out into the unit, one staff member says "oh I thought it was a test" and another says "we’re much quicker responding if we know it’s going to happen…"

We meet werewolves and women who are going to marry Harry Styles but mainly we meet a genuinely nice guy desperately trying to do his best in a broken system to his own detriment.

Recommended if you want to see behind the scenes and understand why the NHS needs better targeted funding.

I was given a copy of this book by NetGalley

I do like these behind the scenes books of NHS workers and this one was all the more interesting thanks to the authors history being woven in to the narrative.
All of these books leave me in awe of anyone who trains as a Dr and incredibly thankful that people do

I really enjoyed this book. It is reminiscent of the great Adam Kay’s books but based in psychiatry rather than OBGYN.

Like Kay, Waterhouse can turn his book around in a second - the prose can go from funny to poignant very quickly. It’s easy to understand and the characters are engaging. This is the book I hoped it would be

Thank you to the author, publishers & NetGalley for granting me access to the ARC in return for an honest review.

You Don't Have to Be Mad to Work Here by Benji Waterhouse, is a very honest take on what it is like to work as an NHS psychiatrist and the pressures that underfunding brings.

It was particularly interesting that the author included his own childhood trauma throughout the book as well as his patient's stories. If you are a fan of Adam Kay's books, then this will also appeal to you as it did for me.

As a current worker within mental health this was certainly a book that attracted me. It was a wonderfully written eye opener,
It’s a must read and is something I would recommend to others in and outside of the NHS and mental health.

Just finished reading this book, it was a really interesting read - I work in NHS mental health services myself, and Dr Benji has done a great job at capturing the ups and downs of working in psychiatry. As far as medical memoirs go, this one genuinely captures the experience of working as a mental health professional in a system that is far from perfect, and the internal struggle that comes with that. There was a good balance of humour with some of the heavier topics that were covered in the book. I also really appreciated the interweaving of Dr Benji's own journey of undertaking therapy throughout the book. Would recommend this book to anyone looking for an honest, yet humorous account of working in an often overlooked sector of the NHS.