Hospital socks

Hospital socks, also known as psych ward socks or grippy socks, are socks given to patients at hospitals, psychiatric facilities, and nursing homes. The socks have non-skid features to prevent patients from slipping and falling. Patients can sometimes arrive at hospital by ambulance without footwear, and are typically provided with socks having a rubberised tread pattern to improve their grip strength. These non-slip socks are intended as alternative footwear to help prevent falls, but there is limited evidence for their usefulness.

Social media
Young people on social media commonly refer to hospital socks as "grippy socks". Slang terms for in-patient psychiatric hospitalization may include "grippy sock vacation", "grippy sock palace", "grippy sock jail", and "grippy sock hotel". Mental health professionals have expressed concern that such black humor may trivialize or romanticize the experience of psychiatric hospitalization. Some feel that tongue-in-cheek terms like "grippy sock vacation" can help destigmatize mental illness. Tags for "grippy socks" are a popular mental health-related tag on TikTok, where the tags have several hundred million views.