Personal Items

Serious business for mental patients: tobacco!

"I don't you cigarettes, or his, or his, or his, or his, or even YOUR cigarettes, I want MY cigarettes!!!!"
--Charlie Cheswick

looks like some kind of commisary (patient store) for necessities they might need for daily living

wow thats soo cool lolz>..

A Shaker mental hospital? Beautiful gorgeous shot!

A store for insain people.
How nice
But thats really creepy at the same time

It's not a store, it's a supply area. When you have several thousand people who live in one place you need to have an area to go to replenish your "essential" supplies, especially on evenings, weekends, and holidays, which is when you ALWAYS seem to run out of things. Because the supply departments are "irregular" in most institutions, we have always been (inadvertently) reinforced for hoarding supplies.

I did a safety inspection of one of my living areas last week where there are currently 14 people living. I found over 150 towels and washcloths, 100 fitted sheets, 150 regular sheets, 85 pillowcases, 45 blankets, 8 extra pillows, 3 large cardboard boxes of paper drinking cups, 1 huge cardboard box of plastic cutlery (probably 1000 items in it), 7 boxes of latex gloves (in three different sizes), 5 bags of disposable safety razors, 6 large boxes of Depends, and 12 boxes of personal wipes. Don't ask me how many bottles of Kutol soap and hand sanitizer there were because I can't count that high without taking off my shoes and socks.

Staff are smart. They know that next week when they order there will somehow be a shortage at the warehouse and they'll not receive their regular supplies, so they stock up. I do enjoy the fact that they want to make sure they have all the supplies that are needed to keep their folks clean and comfortable, but it's a damn shame we can't get the warehouse to get items where they need to be on a more consistent basis.

That's all this is - an area where you keep extra supplies for when they are needed.

this is so true lynne, why for a month straight we didnt have any no slip socks,,,,,,,,, what a thing to have on back order. whats so ironic is that managment was irate because we where having so many falls. I guess they have never tried to walk across a slick floor with just ted hose on, lol.

ladies, i agree totally, we have quite a few collectors at my place, everything to towels, wash cloths, attends, food, false teeth, etc.

No no-slip socks? That's insane! This year I am playing the part of an institutional risk manager and I chase people around (and hector them to death!) to find out why injuries occurred. People are in serious trouble if they let other people go without shoes and socks on living areas where there are lots of other folks who use wheelchairs. And at night if a fall occurs we chase down staff to make sure they had no-slip socks on people. "Penny wise, pound foolish" ;-)

lynne, being a county run home, we are lucky if our residents get no-slip socks, the ones we do get , 'disappear' into the great sock unknown. working the graveyard shift, if a resident decides to get up in the middle of the night we make sure they have socks and shoes on. ive been run over by many a speed demon in a wheelchair . usually their 2nd wind starts about 1:00am. the salvation army sends gifts at xmas, usually a stuffed animal and no slip socks, once they get sent to be labeled, we are lucky to get them back. usually the aides and nurses will purchace them on their own and give them to the residents. what the county dosent give, we give out of our hearts. gotta love the dollar store.....

I tell ya, awyper, if we were ever to get the money back we have put out to make sure our folks got the little extras (when we could afford it), we would all be rich! 8`-) But honestly, it's worth it every time to know they have what they need or they have a few little goodies that's a special treat for them.

I have staff who know that their favorite person loves a particular type of cologne and they make sure that they are always well stocked. Other staff bring in extra warm sockies or pretty colorful blankets or treats that they know the person loves. Staff decorate like the dickens when the holidays come and make sure there are parties and fun activities, just like in the community. Sometimes we have a holiday open house and invite anyone from the community who wants to come, and other times we take some of our folks out to community get-togethers.

I have one group of staff who can't seem to ever get access to recreation money for the holidays, so they spend out of their own pockets and put on Halloween spook houses and Christmas parades. I am trying to bring a little Chanukah into the scene as well, but for this part of the country they don't know what a dreidel is, so what are ya gonna do? I'll try to slide some culture in without them knowin' this year, though. ;-)

I have met very few staff and teachers (I used to be a special ed teacher billions of years ago) who haven't put out a nice chunk of change over the years so their students/clients/residents/patients would be able to get something they really needed or really wanted.

And it's sweet when community people remember to send goodies these folks' way as well. That's why I get such a kick out of the Hell's Angels-type motorcyclists who put on a yearly drive to take stuffed animals to kids in hospitals and other items to people in need.

Yes, the Dollar Store, the Dollar Tree, Everything For A Dollar, Family Dollar, and Big Lots are the places I haunt for goodies for myself and my folks. God bless them! ;-)

Aww, I love to hear stuff like this, Lynne. It's so sweet.

lynne, its great to hear from someone who knows, and really cares. there is alot of us out there.

Even mental patients had to have their 'Lucky Strikes'.

Great picture!!!

uh..... it is just me or is anyone else wondering why the hospital has need of thousands and thousands of 'belts?'

don't mental patients normally wear beltless trousers?

What an odd thought! No, that is only for people on suicide watch who are unsupervised. Or for people in jail. Geez, if we took away the belts of everyone who lives in a mental health facility we would get abuse or neglect charges for letting peoples' hind ends show! 8`-)

Store - short for storage

As far as the TOBACCO, you must remember that not all who were behind thease walls were what we think of as insain. Many people within those walls were there because there was simply no other place for them, they were wards of the state, abandoned by family because they had simple problems that were not as well known as they are today, and not treated. Some of thease people were there because they were addicted to something, or they were gay, or perhaps deformed in some way that braught shame to the family. being "insain" in the past, is not the same as it is today. "Insain" was often a lable given to those that had not comited a crime, but yet socioty did not wish to walk beside.

Bravo! Nicely said Brad.

Thank you Barbara : )

i don't know y but this pic is kinda disturbing!

Is that where they keep the soap or the light bulbs?

This really makes you think how they try to take care of everybodys belongings

Gives me a warm fuzzy feeling, so personal. Dude, didja steal me smokes?

Clothing went on the shelves, most likely,and the drawers were used to put in the items painted on them, so there would be a stockpiles. Bugler tobacco made a fortune off asylums. "Rollies" were a form of currency. ""Tailor Mades" (brand name smokes) were the Benjamins for the patients

Lynne - that was a nice story - and I'm not surprised that your compadres do the same thing. My mother was a tough teacher (she tought SED kids (socially and emotionally disturbed)), and she was always doing the same thing - raiding dollar stores to find things she thought her kids would like. When the kids would do things well, they would get "room bucks", and they could spend those "room bucks" on anything in her classroom that wasn't school owned.

She's retired now, and I'm afraid that a lot of the teachers that have followed her are just the tough part without the heart. She made a lot of difference in a lot of kids' lives - who were on the edge of going to special ed or youth homes because of their behavior.

Damn was she ever hard on me, though.

Haha Max I thought the same thing when i saw the "tobacco" i was like, hey that reminds me of one flew over the cuckoo's nest!

Patients artwork:
http://www.danversstat...easylum.com/art.html

Reminds me of the dumps where people had to take off their clothes and had all their personal belongings confiscated before being gassed in Aushwitz... history class.. *shiver*

Basically that is what it is all their belonging were taken away and they were put in wards that were determind by the illness

my Papa used to work at Roadway express. He tells me of some of his friends and almost friends in the asylum. He said while he was delivering, one of his friends was beat to death while he was getting soap. A crimminally insane person snuck in and had a candle stick and beat his friend to death right in front of his face.

It was freaky

I work as a part time teacher's aide in a private learning center and I do this also; raiding dollar stores to give our kids a bit of holidays( due to the fact that many of the kids are on a specialized diet due to Autisim and ADHD we are not allowed to give out food/candy)
(many of the kids I work with are ADHD, autistic, childhood bipolar and other DDs)

Personal items weren't taken from patients to be mean or to make them feel bad. It was done for safety reasons, to prevent access to anything that could be used as a weapon against oneself or another (belts, drawstrings, shoe strings, razors, glass containers, pocket knives, any mouthwash or perfume that contained alcohol--yes, many people do drink mouthwash if that is the only alcohol available).

Many, perhaps most, patients came to the hospital with next to nothing in the way of personal possessions. Often they had nothing other than the clothes on their backs. A person ends up in a state psychiatric hospital because s/he is unable to live in the community and has no other place to go.

On several occasions I have responded to crisis referrals and gone to the individual's home to obtain needed personal items for a hospital stay. Usually I ended up at a local store to buy what s/he needed for a few days because there was nothing remotely clean or wearable in the person's home. The rest could be provided by the residential site or obtained from thrift stores, but I wanted him/her to have some new things, things that had never belonged to anyone else before. It came out of my own pocket, even winter coats and shoes if that's what was needed. No one asked me to do it, it wasn't part of my job, no one expected it, but it needed to be done, one human being to another. If it was within my ability to do, then it was my responsibility to do. I think most staff feel this way.

its a very nice setup and very well organized
but i agree taking away stuff from the patients for safety reasons

First item in line is TOBACCO? Wow, how times have changed!!

NO health facility would EVER get away with mass tobacco provisions anymore! ;)

Signwriting is a dying art....vinyl sticker lettering SUX!!!

I'll take some tobacco, some soap, a misc -- make that two miscs, and whatever those last two are.

Do you know what our "tobacco" was when I was in my local inpatient mental health unit? A flimsy nicotine patch that did nothing to help the cravings.