Photos of Patients at the South Carolina State Hospital
Patients in restraint and seclusion.
Patients in restraint and seclusion
In these photos, patients at the South Carolina State Hospital are seen in seclusion, restraint, or both. This method was often used to deal with difficult or aggressive patients who were in danger of hurting themselves or others. Mitts, wristers, and muffs were commonly used restraints and attempted to decrease the patient's ability to cause harm. The use of physical restraints and seclusion has been utilized in many psychiatric facilities dating back approximately 300 years (Masters, 2017). At the South Carolina State Hospital, the use of restraints was statistically higher than that of other asylums in the United States at the time; 1 percent of inmates on average compared to “about 10 percent of white men, 9 percent of black men, 7 percent of white women, and 1 percent of black women” (Bryan, 133). At the South Carolina State Hospital, these patients often received no other psychiatric treatment and suffered tremendously in the abysmal conditions. A committee member visiting the hospital wrote they had “seen screaming white women strapped down to beds in locked rooms, and in other departments patients, in restraint, lying in defiled beds” (Bryan, 133). There is limited research on the use of seclusion and restraints in psychiatric settings, but their prevalence has greatly decreased or been eliminated in many mental health facilities. This reduction is partly attributable to patient feedback; “Patients have described these experiences as negative at best, and as traumatic at worst” (Pratt, 2014).
Works Cited
Masters, Kim J. “Physical Restraint: A Historical Review and Current Practice.” Psychiatric Annals, SLACK Incorporated, 12 Jan. 2017, www.healio.com/psychiatry/journals/psycann/2017-1-47-1/%7Be57a5143-84a1-4d32-95aa-cfbeceff88b0%7D/physical-restraint-a-historical-review-and-current-practice.
Bryan, Charles S. Asylum Doctor: James Woods Babcock and the Red Plague of Pellagra. University Of South Carolina Press, 2014.
Pratt, Carlos W. “Seclusion.” Seclusion - an Overview | ScienceDirect Topics, 2014, www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/seclusion.