I'm squatting close to the ground, next to Bert. We're in the courtyard off the dayroom, and he is talking to an American Chinese dentist in the Vietnam War while nursing the butt of a cigarette he rescued from the bin. Now and then, he gives me a sideways glance as he talks. But it isn't me he turns his head to. He's looking at someone from his long-ago past, and he's in a place he once went but never really came back from.
There are others outside here too. Several men pace the yard like soldiers marching in stilted unison, while a woman sings a rendition of songs from The Sound of Music. Her voice flows like pure crystal, from the mountain streams of Salzburg — where she sings. In song, she has control and mastery of herself. But away from the music of her past, she flounders in a world she cannot recognise.
It's 1981, and I'm a post-basic student psychiatric nurse working in a locked ward of a Victorian mental asylum. Some days I wonder what the hell I'm doing here. Other days I feel like I've found my calling.
But thankfully, things have changed a lot since the 1980s. The asylums have long since closed, though fragments of a few remain — crumbling reminders of what many would rather forget. And as I meander back through time, I find memories from those years that are worth retrieving. Images of being with patients who taught me what the textbooks couldn't — how to actually care for them. How to stay close without intimidating. How to reassure without patronising. How to be honest and kind. Then there were those who, through the turmoil of what they were going through, made me look beyond my fear of their psychosis to the people they were on the inside. To them, I will always be grateful.
Fast forward from my training in the institution, through community mental health, private practice, children and family life, postgraduate studies, clinical, education, and executive roles in public and private sector services, and supervising others and consulting in the primary health space, to the work I do now in 2024. I can barely believe more than forty years as a mental health nurse have passed. These days, the work takes me mostly between caring for the carers — as a clinical supervisor or undertaking consultancy work in the governance space for primary mental health services.
On a wintry afternoon in a community-based facility, I'm sitting with a group of staff who work with people with lived experience of mental illness. They speak of the need for honesty with each other, transparency from their leaders, and the importance of this time they have with me to reflect. They share their difficulties, they own their differences, and in doing so, gain a deeper understanding of each other. This process helps them connect differently to their work, their colleagues, and themselves.
The following morning, I'm in a video supervision session with a young man early in his career. The questions he asks are for himself as much as they are for me — about his developing sense of identity and where he finds his place in our profession. He has a level of insight and humility that took me many years of my own career to develop.
The mental health nurses, clinicians, and others I provide clinical supervision to love the work they do, and so do I. And now, as I look back on this brilliant career I've had, I feel nothing but gratitude. For the opportunities my career has given me to broaden my skill set across the spectrum of healthcare services. For the many lessons — some learned very hard — along the way. I know I will miss not working. Not being connected to people and the profession that I was destined — from childhood — to be part of. So, to my profession and all those I have worked with, I leave and say: thank you and goodbye.