Suzette Buchanan, the former CEO of the Universal Service Fund and Caymanas Track Limited, is now chief executive at Bellevue Hospital the 157-year-old mental health institution which, for decades, has been stigmatised by many people. But Buchanan, says she has ended up with the best job of her life.

“I recall my second week joining the hospital I met a young lady who suffers from some kind of psychosis, also affected by secondary alogia. I began to track her progress, visited her as often as I could in an attempt to hear her voice rather than her constant stare into space,” Buchanan told the Jamaica Observer in an exclusive interview last week.

“I met with the family so that I could better understand her journey. However, getting her to speak felt like an uphill task until one Sunday I was outside her ward working with the sanitation team and I heard a voice shouting, ‘Mi fren, come here.’ I looked up and saw her small frame and asked, ‘Jane Doe, is that you?’ She replied, ‘Yes, a mi, come in mi waan si yu.’

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