I've spent lots of time visiting various friends and one ex-girlfriend in places like this.
I don't get freaked out by them any more of course, but there is something fundamentally weird about them. Something to do with how they try to tone everything down by making the place as boring as possible, but all it does is make the state of the people you see there even more shocking.
I like to read the notices that tell the inmates what to do if they hear voices or just list things they can do in the daytime - "Read a magazine / Have a conversation / Think about your attitude to others / etc"
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Zuowan, Sun 14 Dec 2008, 6:25,
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"hurl faeces at the nurses"
is usually a favourite
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Gilgamesh gazed in wonder as Frampton came alive, Sun 14 Dec 2008, 6:33,
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Where is it?
It's hideously clean. I stayed in one once, not at all conducive to mental wellbeing. Now I work for a mental health Trust, based in an aging hospital. The work Christmas dinner is surreal, in a canteen with a walkway overlooking it, with iron caging to stop jumpers.
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Bela Lugosi's Dad, Sun 14 Dec 2008, 6:43,
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