Reviews

I'm normally not that much of a fan of Korean dramas but this show was just SO GOOD. It discusses mental health and so many other social issues in such a human way which is genuinely so refreshing.

The show centres around Da-Eun, a young nurse who gets a new job working on the psychiactric unit of a hospital, an area in which she has never worked before. Each episode details a new interaction with a new mental health issue/patient and shows her learning skills like empathy and responsibility as she learns to deal with them.

I really liked the sheer range of people and mental health issues that this show covered. For example, we saw two young men who experienced panic disorder and were being treated as outpatients. But we also saw people who were both much older and younger than them who were also being treated at the hospital. Whilst the show does discuss some violent meltdowns from patients (its main focus is on an inpatient unit), a hopeful tone is always mantained and we do get to see patients recovering.

One thing I also appreicated was that we got to see Da-Eun herself going through the experiences of poor mental health and being an inpatient herself in the latter half of the season too.

The show does not just discuss mental health though and also goes more into detail about the personal relationships and romances between the doctors, nurses and their families too. We see Deul-Re experiencing family problems which cause her a hard time and nurse Song struggling to support her sister. There's also a bit of romance (between two couples in here) which initially kinda annoted me, but without it, this show would have genuinely been really depressing and hard to watch so I began to appreciate it way more in the end.

Despite all these positives, there are a few things I didn't like as much about the show which were:

1) the focus they had on medication? In my country, you have to be sent to therapy and be already in it before meds are even considered. But once these patients left hospital there was no further mention of it, only that they should be taking their daily meds, which to me felt a little strange seeming as therapy is such a large part of mental health outpatient recovery for many.

2) How Deul-Re's story ended. Like, I get that nursing may not be someone's passion but her departure felt so out of the blue! I can see why people would think about leaving their jobs, but her departure and willingness to leave just felt so sudden. It would've been cool to maybe have some more context to her decision.

Overall though, a really good show which really humanises mental health issues and shows us all the importance of prioritsing ourselves.