6(A)(i). Danger and safety
Some patients interviewed were sympathetic with the perspectives of nursing staff. Two female patients at Kosmonosy Psychiatric Hospital told monitors that cage beds were often the effect of understaffing. In a particularly troubling finding, some patients interviewed reported feeling safer in cage beds due to high levels of violence in psychiatric institutions.
One male patient at Kosmonosy Psychiatric Hospital said that the reason he felt safe in a cage bed was because he felt scared on the ward. At the same institution, a 40-year-old female patient said that she had been placed in a cage bed because she could not protect herself from other patients.
A 40-year-old female patient interviewed at Klatovy Hospital described her shock at seeing a cage bed for the first time. She was so frightened she may be placed in one that she discharged herself from the hospital within a day.
At Kosmonosy Psychiatric Hospital, a 33-year old woman told the monitoring team, “I did not want to be in a cage. I was afraid I would be there forever.” She recalled how four nurses had grabbed her, gave her a tranquilising drug and placed her in a cage bed. Once inside, she had no way to contact the nurses. She subsequently learned that the hospital routinely placed newly-admitted patients into cage beds. She explained: “It is part of the treatment, the patients there realised why they were put there and they don’t do the same thing afterwards.” Asked whether she would have preferred to be treated differently, she said: “It would be better if they had given me something to calm down, rather than the cage.” She explained how later during her hospitalisation she saw another woman who was in a cage bed for a month. When MDAC asked whether she had ever complained about her or the other woman’s treatment, her answer was: “There is nobody to complain to”.
