Seclusion Room #3

Yup, those were the days! I could remember the times where I would sit there in the darkness, listening to the screaming of patients. Every once and a while, the hallway would fall quiet, but then you would hear the slam of something against a wall or door and you just knew right then that it was another innocent soul leaving the body of a man or woman and a demon entering the body. They had me kept up in that room for a week, but only because I told a man to shut up because he would not stop crying. Things were not taken lightly in that building, belive me.

Yeah really... we arent idiots and that crap doesnt impress us

Motts, can't you remove bullshit comments like the one "Tim" left? Go back to your cave now Tim...

When I was a patient (not there) there was laws already in place called patient rights act. Its places like this that patient have rights now and allowed to have a state lawyer if abused or if you feel you don't need medication you can have your case seen. I remember they had a Seclusion room but from the way the other patients and nurses talk it was against the law to force people in there and was never used or something like that. in NY.

Does anyone else find the colors in this room kind of weird? Why would they make the rooms so brightly colored? Orange and yellow?! It seems kind of weird to me.

The bright, happy colours that Angela comments on must have an attempt to alleviate whatever disorder the patient must have been suffering from. Invariably, him or her would have been unhappy to some degree, black would be the colour of the persons mind, the interior of this room would challenge such a feeling.

orange and yellow can induce anger..so it isn't that smart.

no one is make this up as someone who has been in one this kind of thing does happen laws or no just try to make the people who think your crazy get someone in there to help you if you realy think it is made up read becoming anna it will shed some truth for you

Actually, there are patient, or "resident" rights laws in place that make it a very long and complicated process to use physical restraints to reduce the risk of harm from patient to self or staff, but, when these buildings were in use those types of laws had not yet been created. If you are wondering what staff now do in a case where physical restraints are not appropriate but a solution is necessary, they use "chemical restraints", powerful medications which render patients subdued, calmed, or temporarily paralyzed.

Most of the hospitals I worked at had metal doors or one peice wooden doors. This kind of fancy door with panels fakes me out. It displays the slinter factor.
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Perhaps Tim isn't meaning his words to be literal but literary. Imagine being a person who was locked in that room, how horrible it must have been.

The reason for the colors may be because they really didn't know that there was a relatinship between color and behaviors. Like Now blue is not allowed on psych wards because it has been found to cause depression so the use other colors. When you sign into the hospital it is writen in the addmmitting paper work from when I was admmitted for sleep clinic if for your safety of the safety of the staff we have the righ to use restraints. and that was for sleep study.

It sads me that some people not know tru behind patients and staff in mental facilities. The patients are real and they have feelings. and the staff are real and they have feelings. I myself am a mental patient and have go into a mental hospital this come week. I do not deem myself crazy nor demented. I am a normal person, only suffere from severe anxiety and depression that can cause me self-injury. It hurts me when some people belittle the staff and the patients. We are very real and human. I hope this makes sense, and if not, forgive me.

more than likely "decorated" before research made the links between certain colours having adverse effects on mental health. I think someone already said that. Great photos.

wow room #3

To us, right now, this seems so old, dark, and creepy, but actually, back then, it probably didn't seem that way to them when they even built the place. We're just used to the "modern look" of todays medical facillities. Then, again, they didn't have the modern techniques of medicine we have today, either.

Kim, actually, the hospital i've been to about 3 times ( Georgia Regional) was all kinds of blue, and the last time i was committed was less than a year ago.

As I read, I hear not only the voices of wanting to find some reasoning behind the 'why', but I also hear the voices of the ones who have been there. I have been there, I have seen those walls, (not there exactly) but the colours were of the time, for colour therapy is a new ideology, and was not practiced then for paitent therapy. Even now in a facility that I have worked at, the walls are all blue, and bare. It is really quite sad to think why we use these rooms, for utimatly who does it benifit? NOT the patients.

I tried to kill myself a while ago - I think probably about ten years ago now - and went from the emergency room (where they patched me up) to one of the new "psych wards" right in the hospital. I was still pretty agitated when I was in the emergency room (even though they shot me full of something pretty happy), and they kept asking me if I still wanted to hurt myself, and I kept telling them not to give me the chance because I would. They told me that they wanted to put me upstairs in the psych ward, and that they wanted to put me in seclusion, but I was so out of it that they couldn't get me to give them permission, so they had to wait for my mother to get there (an hour drive) to sign papers and take custody of me (I was in my early twenties at the time) so that they could get her permission to put me in seclusion. It was quite an ordeal, and it wasn't easy for them to put me in there, even as messed up as I was. They put me in there a couple more times during my stay in that psych ward, and each time they asked me if I would go, and if I couldn't or wouldn't answer, they had to get ahold of my mom again so they could get permission from her to put me back in the klink again. They were very careful about how they went about it, and though I'm sure that at different times and different places procedures have differed (thus the difference =P), I think these days things are all pretty much on the up and up. My younger sister is a child psychologist, and for about the last five years or so she worked in a hospital for children with severe mental and behavioral disorders; one of her biggest complaints has always been all the red tape they have to cut through to get kids to stop smacking them around.

Question: Does anyone think that seculsion rooms are still necessary? There has been alot of evidence based practice on the use of seclusion rooms over in the UK, and the concensus over there is that other measures can and are being utilized to reduce the amount if not elimate the using of seclusion rooms. Any comments on what other measures can be done to eliminate the use of seclusion rooms here in North America?

That is one of the highest priorities in mental health at this time:
~ http://www.nasmhpd.org...tatement/posses1.htm
~ http://www.naphs.org/News/guidingprinc.html
~ http://www.naphs.org/rscampaign/index.html
~ http://www.medscape.com/viewprogram/5260
~ http://www.jointcommis...traint_Seclusion.htm

there are no many places for mentally ill patients- even the brief care treatments are being threatned to be shut down- amazing enough there is no public out cry for all who go untreated and left to harm themselves do to the law in us that if you are not a threat to the others or yourself you do not need help. One cop told me as my mom was delusional and not on her meds- that crazy isn't against any law- I do feel that these places were not great but much better then what we have now i.e nothing

yes even in a new facility the colors are of the time- meaning that what "now" says the most calm colors are- like blue...even in the military the training areas for soldiers have been painted a light blue- imagine that

Has anyone ever spent time in seclusion? what was the experiance like? how did you feel? how long were you in seclusion? how were you treated?

in response to your comment Psych Nurse i think if the patient is coherient enough to comply it should be their choice me being an insomniac would honestly love isolation because maybe then i would get some sleep i also suffer from clinical depression and mild psychosis

In response to misunderstood comment. As in the days when these asylums where built a lot of people still treat mentally ill people as (for lack of a better word) "Lunatics" and "abnormal" specimens. To some, they are not human beings or people, they are someone to be locked away or worse yet to be thrown on the street to do as they please and the slim few who think this, maybe they will kill each other so we are rid of them. It is a sad way to be, but unfortunatley there are still people with that sort of small mind. I think they should be the ones put into a mental facility anfd evaluated to find out what their problem is.

wow.
awesome colors.
but not good thoughts.

I was commited a few years ago for depression (suicide attempt). There wasn't any color ('cept white) on the walls except for the hideous border at the top.

I wonder if those "seclusion rooms" were used in place of, or in addittion to, pharmacological tranquilizers.

While I was never in a seclusion room I do know people who have. BTW this is a very interesting shot. Particularly the way the paint peels to reveal a different paint scheme underneath.

In the facility that I work in, rarely is someone "chemically" restrained. You can't even put someone in a wheelchair by a table because the table can be considered a restraint. Chemical, mechanical, or hands-on restraint is used sparingly and only to prevent injury. In fact, the resident has more rights than the staff do.

Many, MANY, and I do mean MANY years ago I was an inpatient at a facility for troubled teens. We did have a seclusion room, but it was so rarely used as to be almost obsolete. I never got put in there myself.

my son went to a school for kids with emotional problems . They have a seclusion room. but they call it a 'time out room '. It has a lock and timer so that the teachers can put a child in it and set the timer then go back to class. My son has been in it a couple of times last year. I was never told about it until after the fact.

The colors of the walls would have driven me crazy!!!

To "a psyche nurse" about stopping the use of seclusion rooms. I don't know if it's a real problem that they even use them, but i'm not saying that I am against using then. I'm not entirely clear on what they're used for because when I was in psyche hospital I never had to go in one. But I know I might of injoyed it a little considering the room mates I had...

yeah ahe people who think its a joke to be in a place like this deserves to be in the mental hospital see how they think its a big joke then
who ever thinks this shiys funny fuck you
people who had mental illness back in those days were treated like the jews in the nazi times like shit ect treatment lobotomys and caged up to keep away from society in which made them more mad. not a joke really is it if only pople who laugh at this could really taste it for them selves then would they be laughing

The wall color looks like you want to throw up. That has to be one of the ugliest colors I have seen. If I was a patient I would get sick sitting in that room.

I have been in too many seclusion rooms in community hospitals a private hospital. They were horrific, all of them. This was the 80's. They are still in use, and still abused.

I was traumatized in seclusion rooms. These naive comments are upsetting. It is like no one has any idea of what thousands and thousands have suffered. This happened all the time in the best of hospitals! in my experience they were barren, white dirty holes. I was thrown in by a crowd of men with no understanding of why. Years later I saw a nurse who worked at a world renown hospital where this happened and asked her why they put me in seclusion. I worried it was because I was violent. She said that I was never violent. It was because they thought I would hurt myself by accident or deliberately. I was put in restraints in the seclusion room. I lost touch with reality and thought I was paralyzed. I thought I had died and gone to hell. They left me alone in my pain. What Tim said rings true to me. Some staff may feel like they have less rights than patients. I disagree, and I feel that those staff should quit.