Talk:Padded cell

New section
Why past tense?
 * I was just wondering that. Zoombus (talk) 03:46, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Clearly this was written by someone who has never been institutionalised. I have been thrown in asylums three times in the past few years, so I think I can shed some light on this subject (original research, sure, but true nonetheless). If an admin could please change all past tense to present, that would be a great start; I don't know who told the authors of this page that seclusion rooms (that's what they're called nowadays) aren't used anymore. If I could, I'd at the very least throw up some "dubious", "disputed" and "citation needed" tags here, since nearly the entire text is either false or misleading and has nothing to back it up. Now then, let's get started. The word "cushions" is slightly misleading; all the seclusions I've been put in have a rather hard foam lining the walls, floor and door. The ceiling didn't, but it was high enough that this was irrelevant. It does prevent self-harm to a certain extent, but during the months I spent put away I got quite creative. I was able to peel some of this foam off of the walls (mostly near the doors) with my teeth. At that point I could bash my head against the exposed hard wall. I could also swallow or inhale the foam, but that's not as relevant to correcting the statements in this article. Point is, it's not some kind of soft, fluffy material that keeps you safe like this article suggests; it's still pretty damn firm and, no matter its hardness, it's easy to get around it if you want to. I would say that over 99% of the time I or a fellow inmate was in seclusion it was involuntary, so the statement of compulsion is accurate. 10 ft by 8 ft sounds rather large to me, but I didn't go measuring the seclusion rooms with a tape measure or anything. The padding is most certainly NOT 4 inches deep; as I said, I peeled plenty of it off, it's 2 cm at the most. The walls are made of cement, not canvas or leather.The floor was not covered with leather. The padding wasn't cork crumbs, it was more of a foam which was smooth and continuous on the surface but usually porous on the inside. The door was invariably all steel. In addition to observation windows, there were either cameras or mirrors designed to allow vision of blind spots. One could be kept in such a cell for any amount of time, at the sole discretion of the clinicians. The longest I was ever held in one was several hours, the shortest about 2 minutes. Straitjackets are no longer used; the new method of restraint is four points, which entails using leather straps to bind the wrists and ankles, typically to a stretcher. 60 years after the introduction of psychotropics, the use of seclusion and restraints is still extremely common; I have never seen a psych ward without at least one seclusion room. Would someone please fix this horribly inaccurate article? 68.173.110.91 (talk) 08:09, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Agree definitely not past tense - although not one per ward. Called seclusion rooms where I've worked in the UK. Current terminology is also 'restrictive interventions'. Secretlondon (talk) 17:47, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

What to do with this
I was thinking of adding in information on seclusion but I wonder if we need two articles. Padded cells in history/culture, and something about seclusion/restraint in contemporary mental health settings. Secretlondon (talk) 19:05, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

>Always?
"A padded cell is a cell in a psychiatric hospital..." says the first sentence in the article, but is a padded cell always in a psychiatric hospital? Consider this picture. I took this at the Old Melbourne Gaol (37°48'28.2"S 144°57'55.1"E), a now disused holding facility for prisoners, and it would definitely seem to be a padded cell — but one that is definitely not in a psychiatric hospital. Perhaps somebody can think of a way of explaining this and incorporating this use of a padded cell into the article?

And you may use the photo, too, if you deem it useful. The faces have been blurred, lest anybody complain about being pictured in a padded cell...Kelisi (talk) 19:38, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

"Seclusion room" listed at Redirects for discussion
The redirect [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Seclusion_room&redirect=no Seclusion room] has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at  until a consensus is reached. GnocchiFan (talk) 11:09, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

Changing name of this article
padded cell is not a common term they are almost always called seclusion rooms. and the act of being put in one is called seclusion. I think it would be better to change the name of the article to seclusion room. Epsteindidnotkillhimself smith (talk) 19:06, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Requested move 5 April 2024

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Not moved. (non-admin closure)  microbiology Marcus [petri dish·growths] 16:13, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

Padded cell → Seclusion room – seclusion room is a much more common tern than padded cell SSCTH (talk) 16:05, 5 April 2024 (UTC) The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
 * oppose 'Seclusion room' does not unambiguously mean a padded cell—blindlynx 17:13, 5 April 2024 (UTC)
 * How do you define the two? I think they are the same thing and according to this link "Seclusions can occur in a variety of settings, for example, small padded rooms, utility closets, areas blocked off with gym mats, or empty administrative offices." seclusion rooms almost always have padding which makes them fit most definitions of padded cell. seclusion can occur in any room someone can be locked alone in. so any reports of seclusion happening in a non-padded room could be argued that they were not seclusion rooms sense there was no padding but it was still seclusion.
 * https://www.justice.gov/crt/what-seclusion#:~:text=Seclusion%20is%20the%20involuntary%20confinement,are%20not%20free%20to%20leave). SSCTH (talk) 18:51, 5 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Exactly, they refer to different things, this article is specifically about padded cell and not other types of seclusion rooms—blindlynx 19:21, 5 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Oppose: "Padded cell" or "padded room" seem much more likely to be familiar to most people. "Seclusion room" sounds like some sort of jargonistic euphemism used by the people who enclose other people in them. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 20:13, 5 April 2024 (UTC)
 * I agree with your statement that seclusion rooms sounds like some sort of jargonistic euphemism used by the people who enclose other people in them. but most people know them as seclusion rooms. What I think is that seclusion room should have its own article and padded cells should be mentioned in that article or the title of this article could be renamed to Padded cell/seclusion room to make it easier to understand. SSCTH (talk) 20:52, 5 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Weak oppose - Not all rooms used for the practice of seclusion are technically padded, so while most/all padded rooms are seclusion rooms, not all seclusion rooms are padded rooms. Might lean more toward support if the article's scope encompassed all types of rooms used for seclusion, though other !voters are right about padded cell/padded room being more likely the WP:COMMONNAME for the padded variety at least--a cursory Google search gives 45 million results for "padded room", 15 million for "padded cell", and 11 million for "seclusion room". - Purplewowies (talk) 21:43, 5 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Oppose - the nomination is based on a completely false premise. The terms "padded cell" and "padded room" are all more prevelant terms than "seclusion room" according to ngram's database of books. In fact, expanding the time scale to the past 220 years, it's clear that the term "padded cell" has always been more prevalent. ~Anachronist (talk) 23:30, 5 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Oppose. No it isn't. -- Necrothesp (talk) 12:46, 9 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Oppose, I edit from a padded cell. Randy Kryn (talk) 23:27, 10 April 2024 (UTC)