solitary confinement is recognized as torture, and that’s probably for a good reason. I’ve also had personal experience in psychiatric hospitals with people who had to be confined, and while their being there is probably due to every available professional being entirely hopeless with them, the confinement definitely doesn’t help the situation. even the ex-director of the NIMH, thomas insel, finds in “healing: our path from mental illness to mental health” that a lot of mental healthcare is actually social and communal care, not cold hard medicine. where medicines fail, you can still treat a patient with kindness and patience, integrate them into their community, make friends, have good daily experiences. you can still give them a human touch. all that heals people to some extent, and solitary confinement is exactly the opposite of it.
solitary confinement is recognized as torture, and that’s probably for a good reason. I’ve also had personal experience in psychiatric hospitals with people who had to be confined, and while their being there is probably due to every available professional being entirely hopeless with them, the confinement definitely doesn’t help the situation. even the ex-director of the NIMH, thomas insel, finds in “healing: our path from mental illness to mental health” that a lot of mental healthcare is actually social and communal care, not cold hard medicine. where medicines fail, you can still treat a patient with kindness and patience, integrate them into their community, make friends, have good daily experiences. you can still give them a human touch. all that heals people to some extent, and solitary confinement is exactly the opposite of it.