''Ultimately, my experiences as a mental health nurse have taught me that we should judge less and open our hearts more.''
Belinda Black was just seventeen years old when she began working as a nursing assistant at the large and foreboding ''madhouse'', as it was then known to the villagers of her hometown in the north of England. Following in the footsteps of her mother, she went on to spend a decade caring for patients with widely varying mental health problems, all locked up together and out of view of society. Some had suffered unimaginable trauma, several had violent and volatile tendencies, but amongst this Belinda found moments of joy and even friendship with her patients.
But A Place for Lost Souls is also about the other psychiatric nurses there, from those like Sister Kane who suffered from depression and found treating others a welcome distraction, to others like Belinda''s friend Sally, who always had a sense of humour however dark the situati
