I am a retired, Scottish, NHS consultant forensic psychiatrist, who worked with mentally disordered offenders in prisons, hospitals, and in the community. I am passionate about raising awareness, destigmatisation of mental illness, and introducing the human beings behind the sensationalist newspaper headlines. They are all someone's son or daughter, who didn't ask to get ill. Occasionally mental illness makes good people do bad things. It was my job to find, treat and rehabilitate them. I believe entertaining medical memoirs can engage readers and inform thinking by challenging attitudes and assumptions.
I wrote
I Don't Talk to Dead Bodies: The Curious Encounters of a Forensic Psychiatrist
I loved this memoir because it was humorous and it transported me back to my own days as a junior doctor in a District General hospital, in the mid-1980s.
The black humour of a medic combined with the real human stories made it very relatable. This, merged with an easy-to-read diary style, captured the true life experiences and dilemmas of a junior doctor working in the NHS perfectly.
It was a walk down memory lane for me and it would provide an amusing insight for non-medics.
The acclaimed multimillion-copy bestseller, This Is Going to Hurt is Adam Kay’s equally "blisteringly funny" (Boston Globe) and “heartbreaking” (New Yorker) secret diaries of his years as a young doctor.
Welcome to 97-hour weeks. Welcome to life and death decisions. Welcome to a constant tsunami of bodily fluids. Welcome to earning less than the hospital parking meter. Wave goodbye to your friends and relationships. Welcome to the life of a first-year doctor.
Scribbled in secret after endless days, sleepless nights, and missed weekends, comedian and former medical resident Adam Kay’s This Is Going…
I loved this book as it gave a vivid, no holds barred glimpse into the world of a general/vascular surgeon volunteering in a war zone.
It was written with passion and an eye for detail which captured the imagery and emotions for me, in a way that transported me right into the frontline of the war zone beside him.
This book highlights the necessity for medical services to be provided in war zones and the superhuman personal attributes of those brave staff who venture in there. I am not sure I would have been so brave.
The #1 internationally bestselling, gripping true story of a frontline trauma surgeon operating in the world s most dangerous war zones
For more than 25 years, surgeon David Nott has volunteered in some of the world s most dangerous conflict zones. From Sarajevo under siege in 1993 to clandestine hospitals in rebel-held eastern Aleppo, he has carried out lifesaving operations in the most challenging conditions, and with none of the resources of a major metropolitan hospital. He is now widely acknowledged as the most experienced trauma surgeon in the world.
War Doctor is his extraordinary story, encompassing his surgeries in…
I loved this book, as it confirmed for me the importance of forensic anthropology as a specialty, helping us access information from human remains, to assist in disentangling a person's history after death.
It was heartening to feel the respect shown to the dead ooze from every page and it reminded me of 'Albert' (that's what I named the gentleman who had kindly donated his body to science for me to learn human anatomy as a medical student).
I planted a tree in his memory. It was fascinating, informative, and entertaining in good measure. I am a psychiatrist, but I also have a diploma in forensic medicine, so know a little about the scene of crime investigation.
This book brought the anthropologist's skills to life.
Book of the Year, Saltire Literary Awards A CrimeReads Best True Crime Book of the Month
For fans of Caitlin Doughty, Mary Roach, Kathy Reichs, and CSI shows, a renowned forensic scientist on death and mortality.
Dame Sue Black is an internationally renowned forensic anthropologist and human anatomist. She has lived her life eye to eye with the Grim Reaper, and she writes vividly about it in this book, which is part primer on the basics of identifying human remains, part frank memoir of a woman whose first paying job as a schoolgirl was to apprentice in a butcher shop,…
I loved this book as it triggered memories for me from my time working as a prison psychiatrist in HMP Cornton Vale, Scotland's female prison.
The scenarios and emotions evoked were very relatable and highlighted the complexities involved in dealing with a population of women with complex trauma histories, who may often be both victims and perpetrators of crime.
The mix of relationship difficulties, mental health problems, personalities, substance misuse, self-harming, and humour is both interesting and sadly very familiar. This book helps to raise awareness.
Horrifying, heartbreaking and eye-opening, these are the stories, the patients and the cases that have characterised a career spent being a doctor behind bars.
Violence. Drugs. Suicide. Welcome to the world of a Prison Doctor.
Dr Amanda Brown has treated inmates in the UK's most infamous prisons - first in young offenders' institutions, then at the notorious Wormwood Scrubs and finally at Europe's largest women-only prison in Europe, Bronzefield.
From miraculous pregnancies to dirty protests, and from violent attacks on prisoners to heartbreaking acts of self-harm, she has witnessed it…
Whilst this book is not a medical memoir, I have included it, as it is written by a local authority worker dealing with the gritty side of life.
Often his clients may have crossed over into criminality and have wound up at scenes of crimes, in hospitals, or in custody, where they would have encountered some medics from the grittier specialties with which I am more familiar.
It was raw and funny, but underlying this there was a sadness about the state of humanity and the impact on the health of staff. Local authority service workers are overstretched and understaffed, but find themselves working with some of the most complex and challenging situations and individuals.
This fly-on-the-wall account takes us right into the situations and we feel the emotion. It provides a valuable insight into a less well-known occupation.
Perfect for fans of The Secret Barrister and Adam Kay's This is Going to Hurt. __________________________________ 'Superb. This hysterically funny and moving memoir of an anti-social behaviour officer is a real eye-opener that hits all the right notes' FRANKIE BOYLE
'Anti-Social is brutally honest, exceptionally funny and terribly sad - a scything indictment of broken 21st century Britain. I could not put it down.' THE SECRET BARRISTER
'A fascinating insight into a job that stitches together the cracks in compassion in our communities' RENI EDDO-LODGE, bestselling author of Why I Am No Longer Talking To White People About Race __________________________________…
Join Dr. Rhona Morrison on a funny, bizarre, and often thought-provoking rollercoaster ride through some of the most curious encounters of her career as a forensic psychiatrist. Delve into the minds of real people, whose actions may shock you, but whose stories have the power to challenge your assumptions and the stigma that surrounds mental illness. Travel directly into their living rooms and see behind the closed doors of hospitals, prisons, and courtrooms.
Lift the lid on Dr. Morrison's jaw-dropping experiences with murderers, a stalker and other dangerous offenders as she attempts to make sense of some highly unusual situations. Discover the true stories of the inspiring human beings who are bravely learning to live with major mental illness.
I come by my interest in history and the years before, during, and after the Second World War honestly. For one thing, both my father and my father-in-law served as pilots in the war, my father a P-38 pilot in North Africa and my father-in-law a B-17 bomber pilot in England. Their histories connect me with a period I think we can still almost reach with our fingertips and one that has had a momentous impact on our lives today. I have taken that interest and passion to discover and write true life stories of the war—focusing on the untold and unheard stories often of the “Average Joe.”
October 24, 1944, is not a day of national remembrance. Yet, more Americans serving in World War II perished on that day than on any other single day of the war.
The narrative of No Average Day proceeds hour by hour and incident by incident while focusing its attention on ordinary individuals—clerks, radio operators, cooks, sailors, machinist mates, riflemen, and pilots and their air crews. All were men who chose to serve their country and soon found themselves in a terrifying and otherworldly place.
No Average Day reveals the vastness of the war as it reaches past the beaches in…
October 24, 1944, is not a day of national remembrance. Yet, more Americans serving in World War II perished on that day than on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, or on June 6, 1944, when the Allies stormed the beaches of Normandy, or on any other single day of the war. In its telling of the events of October 24, No Average Day proceeds hour by hour and incident by incident. The book begins with Army Private First-Class Paul Miller's pre-dawn demise in the Sendai #6B Japanese prisoner of war camp. It concludes with the death…
