2,712 Comments for Fuller State School and Hospital
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- Location: Fuller State School and Hospital
- Gallery: Disturbed
What I mean is that Anna, you're right, it's as incongruous here as a snowball in the desert. You'd think that trying to make fat people thin would be fairly low down the list of 'things that mattered' in a mental institution! In a place where relatively little of the outside world made it through the walls and grilles, it's odd that modern society's obsession with weight loss and thin-ness should present itself even in the darkest corners...
I guess it could have been for the use of the nurses rather than the patients... but either way it looks like some kind of barbaric torture instument!
- Location: Fuller State School and Hospital
- Gallery: Disturbed
- Location: Fuller State School and Hospital
- Gallery: Disturbed
- Location: Fuller State School and Hospital
- Gallery: Disturbed
- Location: Fuller State School and Hospital
- Gallery: Disturbed
If you have the time-out room door set up so that when you walk away it will automatically swing open, it prevents a staff person from leaving a client in time-out for a lengthy amount of time. After a certain amount of time has passed and the person is still in the time-out room it becomes obvious you are either using the time-out room because you are angry at the person (retribution) or you want them "out of the way" (staff convenience), and neither one of them is therapeutic. If the staff person has to stand at the door to keep it latched from the outside it means they have to remain in the immediate area, which means they won't be tempted to walk away to do something else, possibly lengthening the amount of time the person is in time-out. When time-out is used there are generally a set of "release criteria," such as being calm and/or quiet for 15 seconds before the door is open. If the staff walks away they can't tell when the client is ready to leave the time-out room, and it may only be a minute or two that the client actually needed to calm down. As well, the staff person needs to be right at the door to either hear or see if the client gets into trouble - if they have a seizure, have a heart attack, engage in self-injurious behavior and need to be removed, etc. I don't believe I ever allowed anyone in time-out past 30 minutes tops - and of course that was only if they continued to threaten others or actually tried to harm someone again when the door was opened. And even on my roughest unit with some pretty tough gentlemen I don't believe we used it for more than a handful of times per month ever.
This is different than a seclusion room. Seclusion rooms are used in mental health facilities and are used in lieu of straitjackets or 4-point restraint. They are utilized if someone is severely agitated or aggressive and needs to be apart from others but won't hurt themself if left alone. The door to the room is locked and the person is left in the room with some form of monitoring, although monitoring is a relatively new requirement. I would certainly support a seclusion room if the only alternative was a mechanical restraint (straitjacket or 4- or 5-point restraint) or chemical restraint (almost always antipsychotics these days). It gives the person the option to calm themself down without being restrained or drugged, and I think that is a very good thing.
There are many times when people are so out of control that they may need one of the more restrictive options, such as if they are huge and strong or if they try to hurt themself and won't stop. Everybody in the general public hates straitjackets and drugs until they have a 300-pound person throwing a bed or file cabinet in their general direction. That isn't meant to be a negative comment toward people who are in such a terrible situation that they have lost control; it is meant for those people who seem to be offended that restraint, meds, or seclusion are ever used without realizing the alternative, which is getting your butt badly kicked or possibly losing your life.
- Location: Fuller State School and Hospital
- Gallery: Disturbed
- Location: Fuller State School and Hospital
- Gallery: Disturbed
Of course, a "simple little time-out room" has so many legal specifications you can't believe it, as it rightly should. It has to be a certain number of square feet and you need adequate ventilation and lighting and temperature control and you must be able to see the person at all times in case they try to hurt themself or become ill, and you can't latch it shut - it has to be set up so that if the person outside the room walks away, the door must automatically swing open. That's so they don't place people in there and just walk away and leave them for long periods of time, like used to happen in the bad old days before time-out rooms were better regulated.
I haven't needed a time-out room for a client for probably 15+ years - in that short of a time we have been more effective in our techniques, we start more training and education at a younger age, there are more sophisticated behavioral programs, and there are better medications if there are concomitant psychiatric issues. And that's a very good thing to be able to say. :-)
- Location: Fuller State School and Hospital
- Gallery: Disturbed
- Location: Fuller State School and Hospital
- Gallery: Disturbed
- Location: Fuller State School and Hospital
- Gallery: Disturbed
- Location: Fuller State School and Hospital
- Gallery: Disturbed
- Location: Fuller State School and Hospital
- Gallery: Disturbed
The 5th floor, which was not occupied anymore, was the old pediatric ward and was said to be haunted.
Well! one night I dis-embark from the elevator, turned the corner and I swear I saw something at the end of a long hallway. This did not happen only once but on several occasions.
The figure appeared to move swiftly out of view as if it knew I was there. At first i thought of the normal stuff, someone doing the same thing as me, just roaming the halls. This wasen't so though, a key was needed to gain access via the elevator and only the charge nurse OD and engineer OD had the key.
So I called the ER to see of the OD nurse was down there and sure enough she was.
Other occasions I'd get a glimpse of a figure moving behind the boilers(they were huge) I'd walk to the area and no-one was there.
Apparently, some yrs prior a boiler tender died of a massive heart-attack and was found back behind the boilers.
I'm still spooked to this day.
So to sum up, do you believe in ghost?