A review by andintothetrees
Twelve Cases: A Psychiatrist's True Stories of Mental Illness and Addiction and Other Human Predispositions by Daniel Mierlak

informative medium-paced

2.5

I do really enjoy books like this where you get to have a nosey into the work of professionals, especially medical ones. I'm not sure I can recommend this one though. On the plus, side, I will admit the author's writing style was pretty funny and the audiobook delivery matched it well. It was also interesting to see how different US healthcare is to UK, especially in the mental health field (the short version is - there's a lot more choice, and a lot more help available a lot faster... If you can pay. Doctors also have much more choice over which patients they will and won't treat, which isn't necessarily a good thing).

But... I duscht find the author very respectful in how he spoke about his patients. I was left wondering if he liked the patients or his job at all, or if it was all about the money for him? (And maybe the hours, as he talks a lot about how psychiatrists don't have to work as many night shifts as other specialists do.) Finally, the chapter on neurodiversity was very outdated - the book was published in 2018 and even with that in mind it felt old-fashioned.