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Ward

Ward

A typical ward in this building... a observation room was placed across two large, symmetrical ward rooms so only one staff member was required to be on watch.
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A person would have to have nerves of steel to be part of the staff that sat in that little room. Being in a cage locked between two large rooms full of psychopaths just isn't my cup of tea...
it was safer in there then roaming about on the wards waiting for a ruckus.see how they save money on staff here, but throw it away in other placess and on other countries?
I daresay like most other institutions, the patients were mostly calm, just a bit "off" so to speak. The people commenting on here seem to have this romantic "gothic" view of these buildings, as in, that everything is dark, and full fo THEMES. Sometimes, crazy just means unable to adhere to soceities norms.
i visited a prison (drug offenses, assaults, break and enter, etc) as part of a university course, I was stricken by how all they have to do is walk around all day in circles in rooms just like these, marginalizing furthur.

I don't sympathize with criminals, but I DO comdemn the notion of "social punishment" as a tool other than deterance, which doenst work ANYWAY. POSITIVE reinforcement, as B.F. Skinner showed, is a MUCH easier and reliable tool than negative reinforcement.
I love Skinner!
Goodness, if we are going to pretend we read Skinner we must admit that he was usually contrasting positive reinforcement with punishment, as opposed to negative reinforcement. They are not the same thing.
Opps! Sorry, I was referring to Skinner from X-Files!

My bad.
lets not forget that Skinner kept his infant daughter in a box. A very cushy box, but a box nonetheless.
Opening Skinner's Box was a damned good read. Though it certainly wasn't a text-book read.
'Cept for the fact that the woman is inaccurate at some very important junctures, negating much of her graceless attempts at quasi-research:
http://www.psychologic...tArticle.cfm?id=1947
http://taxa.epi.umn.ed...Kihlstrom_review.pdf
http://taxa.epi.umn.ed..._Rosenhan_Slater.pdf
http://taxa.epi.umn.ed..._Slater_Rosenhan.pdf
http://taxa.epi.umn.ed...Spitzer_Rosenhan.pdf
http://taxa.epi.umn.ed..._Slater_Rosenhan.pdf
http://www.nytimes.com...amp;partner=USERLAND
http://books.guardian....6000,1168052,00.html
http://www.timesonline...8123-1060351,00.html
(Sorry, her book pissed me off, as well as her juvenile reaction to the legitimate questioning it received from researchers who know what they are talking about.)
Why is it that this site seems to be a magnet for all the ignorant... "individuals" who think all people who spent time in psychiatric hospitals were "psycho" or violent or somehow scary? There are some people like this but the majority of them are not even remotely.
I love snopes, I've disproved many a claim to friends who swore things were true.

However I thought Skinner kept his daughter in a Schrödinger Cat Box. :-)
It looks like a gas chamber to me. Creepy.
The last place I worked in like that was an institution for teens. They were always skimping on staff requirements too. After I left the kids in the top floor (an ancient hospital with a three-story nurses dormitory for nurses in training turned into a youth detention center) waited until the guard went to sleep one night on the Graveyard shift and then crept up and broke his legs with pool cues. They didn't have an observation room. heh heh
and what is one staff member supposed to do in a situation where they require a full staff?????
ingenious really when you think but at what cost to the patients?
Reminds me of a recording studio - sound booth.
THIS IS MY DREAM JOB!!
this or prision. =]

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