Were people ever actually “taken away” by the “men in white coats” to the “funny farm” or the “booby hatch”, or was it just done in the movies, etc.?
They were and in some cases they still are. The men in white coats being orderlies or nurses at the psychiatric hospital or whatever you wish to call it. If a patient escaped or needed to be forcibly re-admitted after discharge it was and in some cases still is standard procedure for those orderlies to bring them back since they have experience in handling psychiatric cases in general and that patient in particular.
I suupose the police or paramedics could do it but the police arent normally trained in administering drugs and paremedics aren’t nromally trained in restraint. Psychiatric nurses are trained in both and have the experience.
However, since the mid-1950s, they no longer employ oversized butterfly nets.
When my grandfather was in his descent into Alzheimer’s, there was a situation where an ambulance was called. He had no idea where he was, and was thoroughly regressed (talking solely in Irish due to the regression made things very difficult). However, he had no problem with the paramedics whatsoever (they were dressed in hi-visibility green/yellow stuff), and was fully co-operative. As soon as a doctor turned up, in white coat, my grandad became resistive, to the point of being dangerously violent (not bad for an 85-year-old). Nobody can know for sure, but it seems clear he had some connection with the white coats, and the realisation of what was happening to him.
In the case of a 302, every one in which I was involved was a police/EMT/paramedic dogpile. We were never assisted by MHMR personnel from the county intake facility. Our job was hogtie, and deliver. Sadly.
A friend of my mother’s remembers her mother being “removed” by men in white coats often when she was a child - I assume that she was an oftentimes mental patient and that her husband or somebody would call the hospital when she started downhill again and they would come for her. I believe she was paranoid schizophrenic - when my mom took her to see A Beautiful Mind, she said she wouldn’t have gone if she’d known how much it was going to remind her of her mother in her “bad times”.
While I was an undergraduate in college, I worked as an “orderly” in a hospital for several years (we were actually referred to as Central Sterile Supply Technicians, though our responsibilities included patient transport responsibilities, etc.). The hospital I worked at included a locked inpatient psychiatric unit, and from time to time we had to head up there to do something or other. The psych unit was nothing like Hollywood sometimes portrays it in the movies–there was nothing obvious to let you know you were on a psych unit, and the patients for the most part behaved like any other inpatient in the hospital.
Only once did I have to actively wrestle an uncooperative patient into restraints on that unit. It was not a fun task. I had plenty of help, and grappling with patients in this manner was by no means a common occurrence in that hospital. I think I can say for certain that hospitals try to avoid combatative situations between patients and staff, and great care is taken to ensure patient safety and dignity. So, to sum it up, I don’t think the “men in white coats” scenario plays itself out inside hospitals very much anymore. Outside of hospitals is a completely different story, of course.
And by the way, I never wore a white coat while I worked there–I always wore blue scrubs.
This is why I love this place.
Eve, you rock.
For those into the delightful history of the insane and mental treatment (and who isn’t), visit the Glore Psychiatric Museum in St. Joseph, Mo.
It’s a hard choice but I believe my favorite exhibit was the one deplaying the thousand or so items found in a patient’s stomach after death. Pins, needles, bottle caps, earrings etc.
It was free entry the time I was there and the souvenir sweatshirts and coffee mugs from their gift shop would make perfect items for the psychiatric buffs on your Christmas list.
They did do it in the 1960s. Just once. For 20 minutes.
True, they use stun guns and thorazine patches.
Time for my favourite men in white coats joke.
These two men were playing golf when suddenly a naked woman dashed across the course followed by four men in white coats. One of them was carrying two buckets of sand. The golfers called one of them men over and asked what was happening.
Came the answer " there’s a mental home just over the hill and every so often this woman takes all her clothes off and runs away " .
And the two buckets of sand ? “That’s his handicap , he caught her last time”
I’m astonished that
this little number
hasn’t come up yet.
::raises hand::
I’ve been forcibly removed to a psychiatric facility on two occasions, once by police officers (the most common personnel to do so) and once by ambulance EMTs who really were wearing the proverbial white coats.
Oddly, those weren’t the times that resulted in incarcerations of more than a few hours apiece. Those came from occasions when I actually caved to pressure and signed voluntary consent forms and then found that sometimes you’re only a voluntary patient until you decide you want to leave.
Forced psychiatric treatment should be ruled illegal and unconstitutional except where demonstrable civil incompetence exists, and psychiatric detainment should be abolished altogether. Law-abiding citizens should be free from being involuntarily detained for things that somebody thinks they might do.
:mad:
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