Hose

An unsettling combination in this one.

Wooden wall-mounted seat? Imagine the number of those stains from patients over the years.....

Not a seat, it's the soap dish.

That is one creepifying drain right there.

thats' harsh

could picture a rotting hand coming out of that drain....it is CREEPY LOOKING!

....umm, yeah, I'm NOT sitting on THAT with bare buns.... :-0

give oe a nice splinter in the bum.

Oh, that's just *ugly*! Still a great shot, though.

Umm.. where's the soap dispenser? :D

you don't get soap 'dispensers' in places like these, and you proberbly al had to share the same sponge too!

kind of looks like a place that I stayed at in St.Michaels Md.

I don't know what conditions were like in *this* place, but in modern psych hospitals/wards, you get bars of soap or tiny travel-sized bottles. You can also bring your own, and there are always plenty of clean linens. I was never in a place that hosed people down, but I can understand the temptation. Some people just refused to bathe, for one reason or another, and sitting next to them at meal times was not a pleasant experience.

I feel like I need a shower after looking at this pic of a shower! Great gallery so far though!

I once worked in an outpatient setting with a man with severe mental illness who did not bathe. His clothes were also beyond filthy. After being near him, you felt like you needed decontamination, not just a shower. The doctors and nurses didn't want to work with him anymore, The other patients didn't want him in the waiting room or in their groups.

When I did a home visit, I found that he lived in a little half-finished shack with no toilet (he used one of those 5 gallon white buckets restaurants get pickles in, with a scavenged toilet seat on top), no running water except from a spigot 50 feet outside his "door" and no means of washing his clothes.

I find this picture and the images it calls to mind of a patient being hosed down, appalling. But what is worse--conditions like this that at least represent an effort to provide care, or leaving people with severe illness to live in ramshackle huts or under bridges with freedom, but no treatment at all?

What you don't seem to understand is that there was once a time when people with mental ilnesses were deemed insane, posessed, or criminal. There was no "mentally ill", only madness.

Raise your hand if you can imagine a spider crawling outta the drain!

yayyy we found the soap dish! hahaha lmfao