Closed department
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A closed ward or a closed or protected ward is an area of a hospital or other facility (for example: long-term facility for the mentally ill ) in which residents or patients are accommodated who are there for a - usually specified - period of time by law or a court order have to stay. The area is characterized by the fact that access is only possible via locking doors that can only be opened by staff. What is meant here is no absolute preventive detention without any possibility of escape, but only a closed and controlled area. If access throughout the facility controlled so one speaks of a closed device or (obsolete) from a closed institution .
background
Psychiatric and adolescent psychiatric clinics that participate in emergency care identify certain wards as “closed” or “protected” or close such wards if necessary in order to accommodate patients who are at risk to themselves or others. Accommodation there can be voluntary, as a police hazard protection measure (regulated in Germany in the Mentally Ill Act and the federal state accommodation laws ), or in the case of minors and persons in care at the request of parents or carers ( accommodation procedure ). Criminal offenders can be referred to psychiatric hospitals by the court according to §§ 63, 64 StGB (see penal system ); these people must also be accommodated in closed wards, mostly in forensic departments that are specialized for this purpose .
In particular, people are housed who can no longer cope with their lives, show massive tendencies towards neglect, are suicidal or dangerous to others, or can no longer lead a life outside of a closed facility due to massive drug or alcohol abuse .
Furnishing
There are no binding guidelines for the structural and personnel equipment of the closed psychiatric facilities. Explicitly closed wards have an always locked access door with a security lock, security window, etc., corridors and treatment rooms that are particularly well visible, and a higher staff density. The common feature is the possibility of therapy under deprivation of liberty, whereby there is no uniform definition of the available treatment measures. Intensive psychotherapeutic care, but also physical restraints or forced medication, can be used, or it is simply a matter of locking up. Protected, semi or partially open (“open-door”) wards should enable longer treatment with gradual relaxation beyond the crisis intervention, so that individual patients can increasingly achieve more personal freedom depending on their progress.
Closed wards for venereal disease in the 20th century
As a measure to combat venereal diseases, the Allies initiated the establishment of veneral disease hospitals, care homes for venereal diseases and closed venerological wards in Germany after the end of the Second World War . People suspected of having a venereal disease were forcibly committed there.
From 1953, the health authorities in the Federal Republic of Germany were authorized to restrict the basic right to freedom of the person in order to combat sexually transmitted diseases. In the GDR, due to the ordinance on the prevention and control of venereal diseases, people could be forcibly admitted to care homes for venereal diseases and closed venerological wards, often without medical indication. In these cases, the action was taken primarily for disciplinary reasons. Upon entering the closed ward, the interned person had to hand in their own clothes and personal items, wash themselves and put on institutional clothing. This was followed by the anamnesis and, in women and girls, the gynecological examination.
literature
- Martina Steger (2005): Imprisonment measures in clinics of child and adolescent psychiatry and psychotherapy. Interim results from the survey in child and adolescent psychiatry clinics. PDF
Individual evidence
- ^ M. Schochow, F. Steger: Politicized medicine in the GDR: Closed venereological stations and the Ministry for State Security. bpb.de, 2018; accessed on February 6, 2020.