A lifetime of service to mental health

By Sean O’Malley
Senior Writer

When Helen McGee was starting out in life as an 18-year-old Bachelor of Science in Nursing student in Toronto in 1970, she aspired to be a speech pathologist for children with developmental delays.

But while working as student nurse at the old Clarke Institute of Psychiatry, she came across a young man who would alter the course of her career.

Her six-week placement was scheduled to end in two weeks. She wanted to prepare the patient for the end of the therapeutic relationship, and asked what his thoughts were.

“He was an inpatient who was seriously ill,” says McGee, a CAMH Advanced Practice Clinical Leader who is being honoured for her 46 years of dedication at the Long Term Service Awards.

“He recalled an experience where someone had taken him to a forest and left him there.  I thought ‘wow’, here is someone who has overcome so much, yet is still able to talk about the experience of feeling abandoned. I asked if my leaving was going to make him feel left behind. We were able to have wonderful conversations about that and what a loss it would be for me too and how much I had appreciated our time together. From that time on I knew this is what I wanted to do. I want to work with people with psychosis.”

She had no way to know then that many years later, some of those people would be her own family members.

McGee has been a nurse her entire career, though in a variety of roles.  After specializing in schizophrenia while earning her nursing degree, she began working on an intake unit, then as a case manager at an outpatient clinic for people with schizophrenia.  She says that in the 1970s there were not many nurses with a Bachelor’s Degree, and those who had one were encouraged to participate in research as well. Her first published research study on complications from long-acting antipsychotic injections that was written with two colleagues, Dr. Mary Seeman and Dr. John Deck, in the 1980s.

Over the next 30 years, as she raised a family of six children, she continued nursing, primarily at outpatient clinics, while continuing to work part time between maternity leaves.

Then at the age of 55, after all her children were grown, she went back to school to get a Master’s Degree in nursing, something she completed at the age of 60.

“The purpose of the Master’s Degree was so I could work in an advanced practice leadership role,” says McGee. “Going back to school gave me the confidence to try something different.  You are looking at systems issues and how you can improve care.  All of my experience, both in my personal family and my clinical experience, has been useful in this role.”

The personal, lived experience she alludes to is having family members with bipolar disorder, which guides her work as a clinician to this day.

“When a young person begins experiencing psychotic symptoms, it’s an overwhelming experience for them and their family,” says McGee. “I have compassion for their suffering; at the same time, I can convey hope that things will get better.”

McGee says that when one of her family members first began experiencing symptoms, the way her clinical background helped the most was that she knew what help was out there and how to get it. Her CAMH colleagues were instrumental in this process.

“I knew how to navigate the system and the best team to go to for young people with bipolar disorder,” she says.  “My own family experience gives me confidence that I can convey to a family that we know how to help.  This can happen to anybody and we know what to do.”

McGee says that in discussing this story with two family members who have bipolar disorder, they told her they wanted CAMH to know that they are both proudly following in her footsteps and devoting their careers to the service of people with mental illness.

“They wanted people to know that my vocation had influenced their work,” says McGee. “They want people to know that people recover after these kind of experiences.”

Congratulations to Helen and all of our Long Service Award Winners.