Julie Holland was born on December 13, 1965 in New York City. She grew up in Framingham, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston.

She attended the University of Pennsylvania, where she majored in the Biological Basis of Behavior, a series of courses combining the study of psychology and neural sciences, with a concentration on psychopharmacology. She received her medical degree from Temple University; during her residency, at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, she served as Chief Resident of the Schizophrenia Research Ward. A principal investigator in a research study examining a new medication for schizophrenia, Holland earned a National Institute of Health Outstanding Resident Award in 1994.

From 1995 through 2004, Holland was an attending psychiatrist in the Comprehensive Psychiatric Emergency Program at Bellevue Hospital in New York. Her national bestseller, Weekends at Bellevue: Nine Years on the Night Shift at the Psych ER, was published in 2009. In describing the book, The New York Times wrote: “Dr. Holland brings readers into the psychiatric emergency room, where she was in charge on weekends for nine years. She explains the language, characters, policies and politics of the highly charged environment of caring for those in crisis. At the same, she walks readers through her mind and its substantial struggles. The book is as much a story about her own internal dramas as it is about mental health care in New York City.” Weekends at Bellevue was optioned by Fox for a television pilot in 2011; the pilot was not picked up. In November 2013, The Hollywood Reporter reported that HBO was developing a comedy based on Holland’s book Moody Bitches: The Truth About the Drugs You’re Taking, the Sex You’re Not Having, The Sleep You’re Missing and What’s Really Making You Crazy.

From 1995 through 2012, Holland was an Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the New York University School of Medicine.