Word: states
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...striking feature at St. Lawrence, which is now 100% open, and in varying degrees at all New York's other state hospitals (average: 66% open), is the transformation of the wards. Gone are the dreary wooden benches, where patients dressed in Mother Hubbards (when they were not undressing themselves) sat listless, sometimes in their own excrement. Instead there is modern, comfortable furniture. Windows, no longer barred, have gay curtains or draperies with drawstrings. Instead of glaring ceiling lights, there are bridge and table lamps. Glass vases hold cut flowers. Plant stands are loaded with potted violets. Glass tumblers...
Near to the Norms. Across the U.S., almost a dozen states are experimenting with open doors, from those unlocked only an hour or two a day to those flung wide throughout the daylight hours. In the early '50s, Pennsylvania rejuvenated its Embreeville State Hospital near Philadelphia, opened its doors in mid-1956. Says Dr. Eleanor R. Wright: "We've had fewer escapes than when the doors were locked. It may not be the best system for every hospital, but it works...
Locked Out. Private hospitals are generally even more reluctant than the states to unlock doors, for fear of damaging incidents and lawsuits. Yet in San Francisco, at the opposite extreme in size from the giant state hospitals, a tiny (14-bed) unit at Stanford Hospital* applies the open-door system with outstanding success. "When we speak of patients as being 'locked up," says the psychiatrist in charge, Dr. Anthony J. Errichetti Jr., "what we really mean is 'locked out'-we are using lock and key to exclude them from society. When we used to put a patient...
...will take a generation or more to clear the state hospitals of the backlog of patients permanently crippled by old-time procedures that, far from making them better, helped to make them worse. But seclusion rooms are being converted into kitchenettes and beauty parlors; camisoles and straps are disappearing. Shock treatment is seldom used, and only for selected patients. Though admission rates are rising, release rates are rising faster, so that in many states there is a net decrease in the numbers of mentally ill confined to hospitals...
...Monel wire and aluminum tubes, which stands 36 ft. high and weighs only 90 lbs. Bucky's "mast" has the makings of a revolution in architecture, because it puts the horizontal steel-in tension principles that apply to suspension bridges into a vertical context. The wires, in a state of tension, keep the mast unbending and rigid. The aluminum tubes, arranged like pairs of end-to-end coat hangers (see cut), push the wires apart to keep them taut. An exact balance of push-and-pull makes the tower stand...