Do locked doors in psychiatric hospitals prevent patients from absconding?

Suicide Risk and Absconding in Psychiatric Hospitals with and without Open Door Policies: A 15-year Naturalistic Observational Study

Background: Inpatient suicides and absconding of inpatients at risk of self-endangering behavior constitute important challenges for all medical disciplines. Patients at risk are often admitted to locked wards in psychiatric hospitals to prevent absconding, suicide attempts, and suicides. However, there is currently insufficient evidence that treatment on locked wards can effectively prevent th...

Absconding of patients on acute psychiatric wards

Results Among compulsory admissions (846 admissions, 11.8% of all admissions) 97 admissions resulted in 148 incidents of absconding involving 72 patients. Typical absconders are younger than 35 years, have a diagnosis of chronic schizophrenia with an alcohol/drug comorbidity, are unmarried, and live on social welfare payments. Only 55.4% of absconders were considered harmful to self or others. ...

Absconding from psychiatric hospitals: a literature review Report from the Conflict and Containment Reduction Research Programme

Do We Need Psychiatric Hospitals?

to follow their predecessors into the rigid acceptance of what was thought to be right. The provision of total community care without any in-patient facilities might eliminate most of the dangers and disadvantages of hospital care. Stigma should be reduced, since people would not 'go away'. Problems would have to be solved in the situation in which they occurred and treatment tried out in reali...

Door locking and exit security measures on acute psychiatric admission wards.

Locking the exit doors of psychiatric wards is believed to reduce the risk of patients absconding. The aims of the study were to investigate both the prevalence of door locking and other exit security measures on UK admission wards, as well as whether door locking appears to be effective in keeping inpatients in. A cross-sectional survey on 136 acute psychiatric wards in the UK was conducted, i...