No Privacy

this is so odd! i cannot make out any sense in spite of abasing the patients.

very strange, i cant imagine why any instution would need bathtubs right across from each other, how debasing!!

DOCTERS JUST ABUSED THEIR POWERS TO GET A GOOD LAUGH.

Rightly or wrongly, maybe the really thought they needed to monitor certain patients' every move!

JAVA, if you think that most MDs actually took the time to view patients you are mistaken - I wish they would have, but few left their offices. Besides, MDs are one of the few groups that are allowed to look at naked people and can actually ask them to take their clothes off without getting hit. :-) Why would they spend time looking at naked people in institutions, most of whom were fairly handicapped, when they could open up a private practice, do physicals, and look at all the nude nonhandicapped people they wanted?

In former days the emphasis was on economics - the budget was miniscule and that meant staffing was very low. In order to take care of the most people in the quickest, easiest, safest fashion (with the least amount of money provided by the latest taxpayers' vote) you had to come up with designs that understood the lack of staffpower and the general condition of the people living there. Privacy is a luxury when the staffing ratio is 1 staff to 30 clients. In order for people to even get baths you have to develop a fast and safe method of doing it. No one enjoyed it, no one believed things would get so crowded, and it wasn't built for someone's sadistic pleasure, although there were and are some sick people (as in every group) who may have enjoyed staring at nude people.

Think about being the sole caretaker for 30 people, most of whom can't walk, who don't understand what you are saying to them, and who can't or won't cooperate when you are trying to clean them up. You have just finished dinner and you are supposed to get all 30 people bathed and ready for bed and it is just you. One of the people in your group wants to take a bath, but you aren't sure she can hold herself up. You could do like they did in some places and have everyone walk through showers and just hose them down. Baths were a luxury because you had to clean the tubs out in between clients, and that took time, so seeing bathtubs is a good thing. However, what if you are working with Client #1 and Client # 2 has a seizure behind you and slips under the water and drowns? What if someone wants to go in the tub room to drown themself? Privacy is the first "luxury" to go when there are few staff and lots of people.

I know that every time someone commits suicide in a mental hospital or jail everyone yells about how they should have been monitored. But then there is a group that hollers about their lack of privacy if they are constantly monitored.

Things are MUCH better today, but there are still many places where we are still working on the concepts of privacy and dignity. And remember - this is a pretty Western/Americanized concept of privacy - there are many other places in the world that consider this a strange thing - to prefer privacy over group activities. We are a fairly modest culture, Brittany Spears notwithstanding. ;-) However, both in the community and in institutional settings that is the current policy - as we do live in America we want to reflect these cultural values - we work with staff so they understand that we can have both. Now that funding is better and we have better staffing ratios (in the daytime 1 staff to 4 or 5 clients in most places - if you are lucky - and 1 staff to 8 clients at night) we are better able to incorporate both privacy and safety.

Well said!

Excellent post, Lynne!

Lynne, I look forward to your comments the most! :-)

Lynne, well said.
I still can't help feeling sorry for the people who were bathed so openly though, its part of the tragedy of having an Illness where you have to rely on others to take care of your every need.

While we ought to grant as much humanity to retarded citizens as we can, it does bear mentioning that people with severe retardation are often incapable of the social anxiety that would make bodily exposure humiliating.
Institutional care is depressing in its factory-like treatment of patients, but truly dysfunctional facilities could be downright barbarous. Among the iniquities Geraldo Rivera exposed at Willowbrook was that staff herded masses of patients into a room with a drain and just hosed them down. Kinda makes that tub room look like a health spa by comparison!

so patiences woulnt do anything stupid.

Perhaps there was a curtain that could be closed when patients were bathed.

well y'know it's fine, if they didn't like being publicly bathed then they could just be beaten up and deprived of food. after all they did only have their patients best interests at heart ey!

Someone else who doesn't read through threads before posting to them.

I hope you're being ironic Mark... though I'm not too sure...

Hey, at least there's a heater in the ceiling!!

Lynn you should also rember that other patients may also be walking past and i certainly hope that you wouldnt enjoy other people you hardly know but have to see everyday watching you bathe. Yes conditions have changed in most places but i know of quite afew places where the conditions are still as bad as described here. i also agree that some patients need to monitored more than others as i understand some may have the tendencies of hurting or killing thereselves but as mentiond in the introduction to the history of the place some paitents were misdiognosed.

The lack of privacy, how hauntingly reminiscent of my stay in a VA state adolescents ward....

i'll show you mine if you show me yours

Viveka,

Most people involuntarily sent to a psych ward, especially as a juvenile, need to be under strict surveillance for obvious reasons. To equate monitoring someone with possible suicidal tendencies with being a Peeping Tom is rather a stretch. If this happened to you recently I can understand why you are still unhappy about it. From the way you write it sounds like this was a fairly recent event. However, your parents would have been even unhappier had people not monitored you just for the sake of "preserving your dignity" if the worst had happened while the staff were being polite and looking the other way. Actually, your parents would have sued the place if something had happened when staff looked away, don't you think? *I* would if it was my relative and I was concerned about their welfare and someone turned their back and something awful happened to them.

You'll probably see this differently in about 10 to 20 years, but for now I am sure your interpretation of what happened will remain uniquely your own.

A lot of times shower rooms and baths need to be accessible for kids who never learned how to bathe correctly. Many of my kids were so severely abused that they have no idea how to care for themselves and staff need to show them how to shower and do basic hygiene. Unfortunately there are many times when we need to invade their privacy in order to teach them what they weren't able to learn from their parents. And Lynne makes a great point about those with suicidal tendencies. I have a 13 year old headbanger/cutter who could probably find 80 different ways to hurt himself if left unattended in the shower. Ways that you or I would never even dream of! Sometimes I think a kid desperate enough could kill himself with a tube of toothpaste- and I'm not saying that with even a hint of joking. I guess you have to imagine a small trade- a little bit of dignity for a lot of safety.

Ah, bless you, Kate!

Lynne - So THAT'S what I've been doing wrong! Everytime I ask to see someone naked I get slapped (ok, ALMOST every time) All I need to do is become an MD? That couldn't take more than a few months, right? :D

I just wanna throw a reminder in here that these weren't exactly mixed sex showers/tubs. It's not like there were male patients wandering around looking in on the female patients, and vice versa. From what I can tell, even most of the staff were the same sex as their wards, ie males with males, females with females. Of course there were exceptions, but then again in the medical profession a naked body is a naked body. You see so many that you don't even think about it anymore...

Naked, Someone said get naked?!?

Whooooooooohoooooooo!

See, now there's the one in 100 that DOESN'T slap me (not ~Me, me) when I say get naked...

Sketch, you don't actually have to BECOME a doctor, you just have to tell people you ARE one. ;-)

Ok... Hi Everybody! I'm a doctor! We should all get naked. :D

I'll have to try that at the bar tonight...

Which bar? I'll meet you there.

LOL!
All too egger we are!

The metal one? Where I live, there is only one bar, and it is always busy, so we'll have to call ahead. How many naked people are we expecting?

~Me: I'm always "egger". That's what makes me so much fun... :D

Now, Now, let's behave, shall we?
















NOT

What fun is behaving? Then again, I'm behaving, just not like everyone else! :D

Re: Mark's comment - this was not a happy place! They closed this place down for mistreating residents. So Lynne's lengthy explainations about how the place wasn't really evil seem to me to be begging the question. Let's HOPE that the practices in a place closed for repeated violations are not anything like those of the places where Lynne has worked!

My perspective is a little different. As a children's advocate, I can tell you that hospitals can and do mistreat patients. Sometimes lack of privacy is used as a punishment. Sometimes the staff is too overworked to care. And sometimes, In the worst cases, individual caretakers consider the mentally ill, the retarded, and the (all too often) perfectly healthy minors imprisoned in these places by their parents as less than human and take pleasure in tormenting them.

I can't see a justification for two bathtubs in the same room with no curtains. It's inherently humiliating and it runs the risk of teaching the staff to think that humiliating patients is standard practice. In a nice, normal hospital, the staff may have to watch you bathe, but they go out of their way to maintain the illusion of caring about your dignity.

Not to mention - it's not safe. If these particular patients really do need constant supervision while bathing, two patients at once sounds like a very bad idea.

(borrowd Lynne's soapbox)

Alliecat-
Lynne does fully admit that mistreatment happened in these places. She admonishes very openly those persons who did/do mistreat patients.

You are right, mistreatment comes in many forms. However, some of these places were over crowded and badly understaffed with no funding to hire more persons to help care for the patients who needed it.

In the case of this bathroom let's create a scenario.
There is one staff member who has 8 patients she is responsible (CA Law is a 4 to1 ratio).
6 patients are medicated and compliant, who aren't causing any current problems, 2 patients are on suicide watch and have been for several days.
You need to see to it that both of them have access to a bath, but you can't leave one of them unsupervised because they are also at high risk for escaping.
You can't let the other one in the bathroom because it has shower curtains and other metal objects that a desperate person who wants to commit suicide will get really creative in the process.
How then, would you be able to make sure they are both bathed without leaving either of them unsupervised?
The solution is simple. 2 tubs, one room, a door that doesn't lock from the inside, and a window for you to watch, to make sure that one of them didn't convince the other to carry out the act.

Yeah, this is extreme, but in many cases, it is an easy solution.

Same with a parent who has 3 kids under age 5 and it's bathtime.. You load them all into the bathtub at the same time. You aren't mistreating your children doing this because there is no privacy. You are actually doing yourself a favor because if you were to leave even one of those children alone and something were to happen.. Now you are in a case of child endangerment and neglect.

Some of these bathrooms where there was 2 tubs(or more) to a room. Were occupied by one patient to one attendant. To ensure safety.

Yes, in modern society and the way we advocate patients now, it does seem cruel and almost inhumane.
There is a little more funding, they try to not over crowd the facilities, and to keep staff at an optimal number.
(that's mental health care utopia)

When some of these places were open and had only a 1000 patient capacity, you could find close to twice that number in residence at some points.

Abuse does happen.. However it happens less and less now with education and intervention. We remember the abuse stories because we are all morbidly fascinated with them.
So they never go away.


Please note. I am not trying to flame anyone. I really just want everyone to look at some of this with a different perspective. No different than Lynne.

Thank you, Lyric! You carried and supported your points very well and I don't think you could flame anyone with them! Thanks again! :0)

Lynne, these tubs are placed rather high off the floor, are they men't for the severly handicapped?

I think they are higher up because these were for patients that couldn't bathe themselves, and an attendent would have to help. Being higher up would make it easier for the attendent so they wouldn't have to bend over so far. How they got them up there, though...hoverlift?

Our friend, the Hoyer lift!

http://www.opacity.us/image1952.htm

{{{{Lyric}}}}

Thanks Barbra and lynne,
i just showed this picture to my wife, who took nurse aid training at a veterans facility, and she said they had multiple tubs and showers there also. she mentioned using the hoyer lift and being able to wheel the residents into special showers on a gurney. The other thing she told me was they had tubs with a side that swung open to make it easyer to get the residents in and out.
she agereed with why there were multiple tubs, having to bathe multiple patients at one time. She was confused as the reason for the observation window, although there has to be a reasonable answer for it being there, it would be to costly and labor intensive to have been put there " just for fun "

{{{{{ Lynne }}}}}}

I borrowed your soapbox ma'am. I hope you didn't mind.

I also wanted to add, could there have been a curtain on the inside that could be pulled closed for privacy, there is something laying across the end of the closest tub.
Perhaps the window is to insure that nobody is accidentally left inside the room.

You know what, y'all? I've changed my mind. I am tired of the repeated attacks from people who seem to be more "in the know" than anyone else. So here it is; what some of you have been waiting for:

Yes, the truth is that we beat up all the poor innocent locked-up mistreated people who live in institutional facilities and we ask all the staff to do the same. Hell, we fire them if they don't. We line people up without clothes for laughs and then take pix and show to the public because we are all sick and twisted. We also starve everyone and chain them to the bed because we are bored and sit around all day on our fat butts with nothing better to do. No one knows how to advocate for people with handicaps except people who have never actually seen one. You are all correct - you surpass those of us who have spent years doing this and we have all lied and hidden the truth from you very smart cookies who have finally figured us evil ones out. The jig is up - we're busted! Oops! Our bad!

Happy?

Lynne!...how could you!? >:P hahahaha i'm kidding....i know you guys do excellent work with the disabled, and i can see how it would be a very demanding job but you quite obviously have a passion for it and i respect that..and i don't think i'm alone in that regard. Keep it up

Lynne,
Your last comment didn't have anything to do with my last posting, did it? If so please let me know what i may have said wrong, i don't want it to seem sa if i am putting down anyone in your profession.

No, my darling one. :-)

NO! Lynne, you let out the BIG secret!

What's every one in health care going to do? *whining voice* How could you?

At least you left out the mandetory classes on depriving people of their dignity and...uh oh I said too much.

;-/

Lynne and Lyric, and all others here who have been educated in these matters....... GOOD FOR YOU! I can't believe how many people still wish to point nasty fingers at those who are compassionate and caring, and who choose to work in an underpaid, overworked profession in order to HELP the unfortunates. Maybe one day some of them will know someone who is a patient and they'll see for themselves how wrong they have judged in the past.

Lynne, I'll say it again. You, and people like you, are Angels of Mercy. What the rest of us would do without you and your kind is beyond me. I'd hope to have you taking care of me or my loved ones if we ever needed it.

Sorry to get "off topic" Mr. Motts, but this is just way too important for people to understand, and it does have to do with the buildings and their past, that you keep alive so well for us all.

ITS CALLED SECURITY OK?

When I was sent involuntarily (spell?) to the mental hospital for suicide tendicies (spell?) I was under strict suicide watch, and I no could bath alone nor use toilet without some there with me. It was shameful have guard over me and under lock and key, however, I thankful now I was no left alone and was monitered much. If not, I would may not be here posting this comment. I would have suceeded in suicide. I know many prefer their privacy, but when comes to safety, then privacy has be placed on secondary and not primary. Hope this makes sense. I no good with word structure, sorry.

DeafAngel, you make perfect sense, and I too am glad that they monitored you constantly. I don't think it would be as fun here without you!
Privacy is a priviledge, not a right, and if it means saving someone's life, their privacy SHOULD be revoked. I'd rather someone be alive and humiliated than dead to protect their "dignity"...

hi functioning behaviour retards is what this place was., that means they have a bit of smarts to them,usually directed at you.or another one for a reason.i had as many as 14 alone usually i had 10.we allways had enough material for themand any unit that lets urine go to amonia is a crappy unit. those who worked there and complained of smell might have gotten a mop and cleaned it up.I cleaned up 16 tons a shit and puke no doubt, and i finally got a pension. it was a job.and pay was better than what ever eklse i got.besides i did some good stuff, but mostly it was training them. and training consisted of teaching them not to fuck with you. (they did anyways allways). they would stalk female staff, blind side you,shit on the floor scoop it up and eat it while they stared in your eyes and grinned at you.right out trying to take your head off, if you dont think you werent fighting then you were of no use.and in take downs getting severly biyt or head butted was a hazard. I was lucky for the most part.but here is the method. smearing feces , do not feed,stalking attacking staff, tie up and beat the shit out of them.general purpose control, keeping your radar tuned and never get the i king shit attitude. see I can grab table legs too, and IO can be even worse then them. that is the way they wanted it.and yu do it cuz that is the way to run an unit with best smooth function.cutting off air supply and other little manuevers helped. cops do many worse things cuz i seen em in the one or two times i got locked up therefor an hour or two.only a fool antagonizes a jailer.when they delivered them to us they always liked to hand it all over to us and we just told the mto let us take the cuffs on when we think it ok.spiting , you wrap their t-shirt over their head and jerk it around and disorient them. i am not tallking innocent babies these guys were adult males. and the females were just as bad, and if you went easy on them you got hurt bad.so there friends dont judge cuz that is the way things are.

xtiml - wtf?
im not about to start on picking that spiel to shreds because frankly i dont have enough time or energy to do the job properly.. suffice it to say that sure, "they" ate their own faeces and suffered violent episodes for the one sole reason that "they" were trying to fuck with you.
Im sure that those capable of supplying humane mental health care are heaving one hell of a sigh of relief at the retirement of yourself and others of similar ilk and professional standard.

Humane Mental health care. Read the synopsis, notice what type of facility. Now remember for most of the place's existence, things were pretty primitive. For most of the place's existence it was a very low paying place to work. Requirement for a job was a pulse. Training and supervision were nil. You coped or you didn't. It was a violent filthy job. Prior to the discovery of tranquilizers it was a thrill a minute sort of place. Abuse happened yes. You work a job where the pay sucks, people eat feces, attack people for no reason. Where just keeping them alive for 8 hours was going to be a real challenge. A place where you've had your nose broken by a headbutt. You have your clothes ripped off your body, glasses broken, pile up scars at a record pace, and see if you don't snap. Things did and have improved over the years. Shit still happens god knows, but it's better.

You pretty much nailed what it used to be like and what it can still be like in some places or on some days.

I think I'm finally getting too old for this field. 8`-)

when i started out i worked in a CB unit.. ive done the scarred, headbutted, pissed on and stalked. nonetheless, i never really felt the need to teach anybody the not to fuck lesson by cutting off their airways.
i thank you though Ed for the pertinent reminder to read and remember what these places were like.. however that doesnt necessarily mean that im going to be oozing "props" to da well 'ard jailer.. aiiight?

xtiml, what on earth???

On a totally seperate topic, and back to the photograph, many hospitals of this type did not have curtains on the showers and baths: It was felt that the learning disabled/ mentally ill were unable to appreciate the privacy a curtain woud have ensured. It was assumed that they could not feel shame or embarassment like other people and as such didn't need curtain. Architects designing the properties were instructed not to install them. I have also have been told it was a cost-saving measure.

Maybe sometimes the better patients were left temporarily to their own devices while the aides had other work to do, maybe readying the next patients for bath, and they used the window to make sure no one was drowning, getting hurt, or hurting someone else.

It is a blessing to have people like Lynne and others who take extraordinarily good care of patients. However, I feel sad for all the patients (past and present) who aren't so lucky and, unfortunately, end up under the care of sick and perverted employees. One can only imagine the humiliation and helplessness felt by some of these patients.

i work the the developmentally disabled in NY and my guess it that the windows were there most likely for the staff to watch in on the students at they took baths.. perhaps there were higher functioning developmetally disabled that were able to wash them selves independantly they just need to have an eye kept on them

xtiml,
QUIT using the word retard! Or are you that way yourself! I deal with mentally challenged people, and this is one of the worst insults to them, and I find it only true retards use this word. Lynn is right about what she speaks, this precautions are there for the protection of these patients.

i work at a rehab clinic and we deal with alot of poepl 35 to a hall. and believe me most of the help is not really there to help. and if you are one of the few that really cares to help its a hard job. worth it in the end but hard. and a glass window like the one above is very helpful. just to keep an eye out. cause in hall of 35 most of the time 10 or more are in need of something all at once. and the window comes in handy when you have someone in the shower and you are also answering all the call lights.

i can imagine some of the kids there being so depressed just from being in a place like that that they would want to just die. so having the tub room visible, with a window out to the hallway, makes sense, just so no-one could sneak in there, fill up a tub (i'm sure someone determined to die could figure out how after observing the nurse do it enough times), and drown themself.

Lynn,
Once again, you've put a rational yet compassionate face on the other side of things. Thank you.

CF

I spent several summers between my time in grade school up to my Freshman year of high school at our state's school for the blind. It was a summer school program that focused on some of the things that we needed either help with or exposure to. Things like self-care and living skills. This included but was not limited to such things as making a bed. zipping up one's own jacket, my personal hell for one summer when I first started,shoe laces, both the installation and tying of. We learned very basic cooking skills, how to do our own laundry, some mending like putting buttons on to cloth and any personal hygeen type skills... We also worked on blindness skills such as braille, learning to use recorded books, O and M, Orientation and Mobility, which is learning to use a white cane or other adpative travel device, how to read traffic without seeing the stop light, how to ask for directions, plan a trip, stuff like that. And fun things like swimming and computers...

What we learned, like I said, was based in part upon recomendations from our parents and V.I. (special ed teachers trained to work with blind kids). What we learned at the school day, especially in relation to our personal self-care skills were observed and worked on when we returned to our dorms.

This meant everything. And I do mean everything! Especially if you were one of the younger kids. The dorm was split into a boys side. I didn't ever go over there more than a hand full of times so I can't say what it was like over there, but I'm guessing it was more or less the same as happened over on our side. On our side there was the main dorm where the younger girls from about age 5 through 12ish would live. and then then there was the east wing where the older girls stayed. The older girls had much more privicy. For every 2 2 person bedrooms there was a shared bathroom. They had their own kitchenette and lounge. It was a pretty sweet setup if you ask me. I know I loved it when I finally landed a spot there.

On the main dorm there were several large 3 - 4 person bedrooms. We each got a closet, a desk and a chest of drawrs if we were lucky. Some kids had to split up the dwars one having the top 2 and the other having the bottem 2... We had a large lounge and a empty bedroom that was converted into a weekend breakfast room. We had a piano room at the end of the long hall and a large "public" bathroom. When you walked in straight ahead of you was a large open space with a washer and dryer and a large sink on your right. A sort of wall that was open on both ends on your left. A full length mirror was on this wall and a large gray laundry baskette where bed clothes and towels and school owned laundry was put. If you turned right there was a long row of toilet stalls and across from that, on the wall behind the washer and dryer, a long row of sinks and mirrors. If you turned left and went round the full length mirror wall you had a stall shower. and then two bathtubsthen a small wall and a single tub on that next to the windows. There were chairs next to each tub... There wasn't much privicy in the bath section unless you took a shower or got the tub next to the window... But even then you were pretty much on display.

The reason being that a dorm mother would oversee the baths and stand there and watch you, especially if you were a lil kid to make sure you took a bath and cleaned your body and washed your hair rather than play around . Some kids even got watched when they did their toilet. Because I guess they needed help.

The reason we were watched even when taking a bath or whatever was to, like I think I saidd, was to make sure we were doing our self-care properly or to spot any troubles that had gone unnoticed... It didn't bother me when I was younger but today, partly I think because of the lack of privicy we had to put up with there, I am a very privet toilet person. I can't stand to bathe or do my toilet if someone else is around and I try to get changed in regards to my clothes as quickly and as unseen as possible.

The tubs in this picture are in fact very much like, right down to the placement/arrangement minus the big hallway? window as the tubs in the dorm (long gone by now, they knocked it down oh, over 10 years ago in favor of whatever it is they have for a dorm now) had been.

I just want to point out that just because there ARE two tubs in that room, doesn't mean that it was standard practice to use both at the same time. It just means that they COULD use both if they had to get a lot of people clean fast.

I mean... most public toilets have a whole bunch of cubicles, but you rarely see ALL of them being occupied at the same time - it just meanas that the buiding CAN cope with more people when it has to.

T he reason for the windows looking in the wash rooms are simple. A lot of abused children would think they were not being watched while they took bathes and would try to commit suicide. Every so often a nurse would walk by to make sure the children were oaky.

Probably there was a good reason. But I can't avoid to think that it's a violence and a slight of human right of privacy. And in any case I think it's very sad. I haven't a great trust in doctors because they are first humans and I don't trust a lot in humans.
p.s.: Sorry for the uncorrect english, I'm not mothertongue...

i suspect it was to make sure doctors n nurses could see if a patient was drowning either by accident or deliberately,.

Honestly, I know that "Lynne" hasn't posted here for several years, but I've been going through many of the galleries and I'm just honestly annoyed with her responses to everyone. While it is true that there are many dedicated, caring and decent workers in the mental healthcare field (and I am sure that she is one of them), abuse and conditions that seem completely inhumane to our eyes now were accepted and completely normal turn of the century and even up into the 1950s-60s. Not to mention that this particular facility was well-known for its poor treatment of patients. I'm sorry, 74 patients don't file a class-action lawsuit for absolutely no reason. I think Lynne, if she even still posts here, needs to stop getting so defensive -- no one here insulted her or suggested that she herself was abusive towards patients. Ugh.

Most of these people didn't know or have any idea that they were nude and did not have the mental capacity to be embarrassed.

Lynne has acknowledged the past abuses we now know about-it was due to severe overcrowding and understaffing as a result of underfunding. Lynne has made several greatly informative comments regarding current safeguards and making sure that residents of care facilities really are cared for.

i wouldnt want to have a bath if i was a patient there how shameful is that

Why was my coment deleted?

Thank you, Chloe. I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels that way. People clearly were mistreated in this place. Does that mean they're mistreated everywhere? Of course not. It's the exception, not the rule. Granted, I tend to be biased in favor of patients, having been one myself on more than one occasion, but I don't believe there's any justification for what we're seeing in this photo. It's demeaning, it's degrading and it's dehumanizing.

It reminds me of 'Girl Interrupted' with a bunch of tubs in rows HUGE tile room with nurses watching your every move like a child....it makes me sad

Any chance these were hydrotherapy tubs? Those would have required observation by a caregiver, but a person in a hydro tub is covered with canvas sheeting.