Sometimes Amazing Things Happen: Heartbreak and Hope on the Bellevue Hospital Psychiatric Prison Ward

“The individual stories of these men—who were central to my experiences as a psychiatrist—are at once incredibly humbling, terrifying, and inspiring. Through them, I learned about survival and hope.” —Elizabeth Ford, MD

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.

In this captivating memoir, Dr. Elizabeth Ford, now the Chief of Psychiatry for Correctional Health Services for New York City’s Health and Hospitals, shares her stories of caring for these at-risk patients—like the most hated and alienated inmate on Rikers, who cries when discussing his abusive childhood, the writer who agrees to treatment in exchange for Dr. Ford’s take on the opening chapter of his novel, and 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.

This is a story of friendship, redemption, and joy—of tough, hardworking doctors and staff fighting to care for and keep safe a population many would like to forget. It is also a story of institutional failure, and the nationwide warehousing of the mentally ill which has funneled more than 300,000 severely impaired individuals into prisons and jails that are neither equipped nor staffed to handle them.

The numbers involved are staggering:

• 356,268 people with mental illnesses  are incarcerated— compared to just about 35,000 people who are receiving treatment in state hospitals.
• 44 states and the District of Columbia have at least one jail that houses more people with mental illnesses than the largest state psychiatric hospital does.
• Most of the prisoners who suffer from mental health issues are grappling with mood and psychotic disorders, like severe depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia.

Ford’s patients could be violent and unpredictable, but they were also funny and tender. Above all, they were human—and they awakened in Ford a profound compassion. Urgent and eloquent, her indelible chronicle offers proof that sometimes amazing things happen.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Elizabeth Ford, MD is currently the Chief of Psychiatry for Correctional Health Services for New York City’s Health and Hospitals and a Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at New York University School of Medicine. She spent years working on the jail inpatient psychiatry service at Bellevue and in the Bellevue psychiatric emergency room, specializing in the care of individuals with mental illness in the criminal justice system. Dr. Ford teaches and writes extensively about topics related to the interface of mental health, law, and correctional settings. She lives in New York with her family.