Boston Psychiatric

J. Brian Turk

Riotously funny and unexpectedly heartfelt, Boston Psychiatric is the story of a doctor who falls from the top of Boston’s medical elite into the controlled chaos of a struggling free clinic.

Not long ago, Dr. Raj Malika’s future seemed all but guaranteed: He was the CEO of a billion-dollar pharmaceutical startup, and winner of Boston’s “30 Hot Doctors Under 30.” Then came the trial that destroyed his career. Now he is a parolee with something to prove, assigned community service at Boston Psychiatric, a free clinic barely holding itself together.

At Boston Psychiatric, the coffee is terrible, the paperwork never ends, and the patients are often the most stable people in the building. The exhausted staff have spent years keeping the place alive through sheer stubbornness, and they are not particularly excited about welcoming a disgraced celebrity doctor.

Determined to prove he is more than the scandal that nearly ended his life in medicine, Malika throws himself into the daily chaos of the clinic. Along the way, he meets a cast of patients rivaled in their idiosyncrasies only by the nurses and doctors trying to help them. He also meets Jen Carlisle, a sharp-tongued volunteer unimpressed by his résumé and immune to his charm, who quickly becomes the one person willing to tell him the truth he least wants to hear.

But Boston Psychiatric is running out of time. When budget cuts and bureaucratic scrutiny threaten to shut the clinic down for good, Malika and the staff attempt something radical: empowering the patients themselves to become part of the solution. Will the gamble save the clinic, or destroy what little credibility Malika has left?

Witty, compassionate, and deeply human, Boston Psychiatric is a comedy-drama about failure, second chances, and the unexpected communities that form when people are trying, imperfectly, to heal.

J. Brian Turk is a former US Air Force Major who served in military intelligence and later worked as a security consultant in the Middle East. Years later in Boston, he discovered a very different kind of training: studying improv comedy at Improv Asylum and theater acting at Harvard, where timing, presence, and absurdity revealed truths no manual could teach.

Turk went on to write screenplays for Hollywood, produce and direct projects, and create The Boston Comedy Crew, a New England television show in which he also performed. He is also the creator of the acclaimed mystery series Dr. Weston Will See You Now, which reimagines Sherlock Holmes in modern-day Boston.

In Boston Psychiatric and beyond, Turk writes about flawed people trying to survive imperfect systems, always searching for the spark of humor and humanity that helps people endure. After many years in New England, he brings an authentic voice to his Boston stories.