Thursday, December 23, 2010

GARTH DANIELS - HDU - The Culture of Psychiatry

HDU-Accronym for High Dependency Unit - used in hospital Psychiatry Wards which implies security doors locked from the outside...cut off from the rest of society...being treated without informed consent...treated in isolation against one's free will.

The HDU also has rooms for solitary confinement, referred to as seclusion...total isolation from other patients... It is noted that a senior hospital administrator Ben Kelley of Maroonda Hospital not too long ago referred to seclusion as a form of treatment. It begs the question why society tolerates such "treatment".

The reason perhaps is because we as a society don't wish to know...? Or is it because no one other than those committed are aware of the culture that prevails behind those locked doors...until now?