9781941393437

1941393438

The chief of psychiatry for Correctional Health Services in New York City presents a memoir of her work inside Bellevue Hospital's forensic psychiatry unit to share insights into the cases, colleagues, and system that have shaped her views about survival and humanity.

"Welcome to the Bellevue Hospital Psychiatric Prison Ward, a maximum-security hospital and inpatient psychiatric unit for the inmates of the New York City jail system, with its hub on Rikers Island. It is a world of heartbreak, violence, and pain, where severely ill men are often lost in a tangle of courts, jails, and bureaucracy. It is also a place of challenges, redemption, and surprising joy, where tough, hardworking doctors and staff fight to care for and keep safe a population that many would like to forget. This is where Dr. Elizabeth Ford, now the Chief of Psychiatry for Correctional Health Services for New York City's Health and Hospitals, found her calling. Dr. Ford shares her stories of caring for these patients from one of the most hated and alienated inmates at Rikers, who cries when discussing his abusive childhood, to the writer, who agrees to treatment in exchange for Dr. Ford's take on the opening chapter of his book, to the twenty-four-year-old schizophrenic whom Dr. Ford later encounters on the streets of Manhattan, happy and healthy after finally finding the right medication. Ford's riveting memoir is marked by explosive crises and episodes of violent psychosis, but also moving stories of compassion and hope in the face of overwhelming dysfunction. Eloquent and urgent, her indelible chronicle offers affecting proof that sometimes amazing things happen."--Jacket.

The body bag

Caught between the cracks

Stars over Bellevue

Never what you expect

The tender and the troubled

Mama grizzly

Pushing the limit

What doesn't break you

The listening cure

A mother's love

Even the stars can fall

When darkness comes

Shelter the broken

Unraveling

Burnout strikes

Out of the depths

Death and birth

Reunion

Back to the fire

Welcome back

Under the surface

Keeping secrets

Compassion is a verb

When the bridges close

When the lights go out

A light in the dark

Grace will lead

On the island

Keeping promises

Difficult goodbye

Sometimes amazing things happen

A story worth telling

Higher power

Ping-pong therapy

A brighter day

Beyond Bellevue.

Psychiatrists > United States > Biography.

Mentally ill prisoners > Care > New York (State) > New York.

Prisoners > Mental health services > New York (State) > New York.

Psychiatric hospitals > New York (State) > New York.

Psychiatric hospitals > New York (State) > New York.