Mental Wards to Blackboards

About the Book

The short stories are born out of fifty years of psychiatric and general nursing. They are based on truth...my truth...as my memory serves me. My tales start from behind the barred windows of a mental hospital with distraught patients and little effective treatment. Hierarchy and patriarchy were the authority. The psychiatric medications were just coming into full use. My stories reveal the lives of those patients and the nurses who cared for them.

After leaving the mental hospitals I nursed on acute psychiatric units with some bizarre stories to tell. I help the reader to understand the illnesses and offer suggestions as how to relate to the individuals who suffer from them. I have tried to write the stories so that the reader can put a face to the characters and gain insight into mental illness and its devastating effects.

My career culminated as an instructor at a university college. I brought magic to the classroom with my passion and my stories. I want the reader to enjoy my experiences working with students and share in the lives of the elderly clientele we encountered.

I write of my successes and my failures. I write what is real without glamour or falsehoods.

About the Author

Marie Legault started her psychiatric nursing (RPN) career in 1957, returning to school in 1981 to get her Registered Nurse Diploma (RN). At the age of sixty-two, she once again became a student, and received her Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BsN). She is now semi retired after completing fifty years of nursing in a variety of hospitals and classrooms. In 2007 she received an Award of Excellence from the College of Registered Psychiatric Nurses of B.C. for outstanding contribution as a registered psychiatric nurse in the category of education. In 1997, she received an Award of Merit in the category of Psychiatric Nursing Practise. In 1995, she was recognized as a Community Leader in Nanaimo, B.C., where she currently lives.