For a week, Beatrice Jeschek was the silent shadow of Andreas Sartory, male nurse at the Westphalian centre for psychiatry and psychotherapy.

The article gives an insight in those little steps the patients make everyday with the help of their nurses - and about fighting prejudices outside the walls of the psychiatry. Life at the centre can be spectacularly unspectacular, Sartory knows.

This article was first published 21/06/2006 in the print edition of WAZ (Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung) media group, Germany's third largest newspaper and magazine publisher.