I have been meaning to mention this for a while. Someone ought to know about it.
I spent some months in a UK based mixed psych ward last year. There were rooms which were identical to wards. Occasionally people had their own room. Pressure on beds was such that they were turning any office into a bedroom at times. The staff were wonderful and I had really good care.
There was a 'man' who was clearly biologically a woman. She - I mean he - had their own room for obvious reasons. I have no complaints.
The rooms were open. We weren't allowed to shut the doors. Straight across the corridor from the women's room there was a men's room. They often weren't well enough to think about wearing clothes.
There was a very beautiful 19 year old in my room. A male patient used to come to the door and demand that she come out to go down to the social room with him. She went, but then found herself being touched in a nonconsensual way that made her feel 'dirty '. It really affected her. He took another extremely vulnerable and unwell girl on his knee and kissed her. She didn't want to say anything because he was known to be explosive. Both women tried to complain. The police were called. They ignore the 19 year old because they wanted to speak to her about drug related offenses. They just refused to see her. I don't know if they ever did. Her health really deteriorated at that time and she actually discharged herself suicidal. Occasionally staff allow this. This time they did, with the ward manager saying he'd take responsibility for it. She will have gone straight back to the drugs she was taking.
The police told the other young women that she had not said 'no' so the man had no way of knowing he wasn't welcome. I don't know if that was exactly what they really did say because this is her account. But she was suicidal afterwards and completely ashamed. The man in question threw a biro at a nurse on another occasion. The police visited that same day and fined him 80 pounds. Following the incidents with the women, he was moved to a place called 'the lock up' at another hospital. He was back the day after the women in question were discharged, even though by that stage we had new vulnerable and attractive young women on the ward.
On the night the girl was assaulted in the social room, there had already been a similar incident. It was Christmas and the staff were run off their feet. They were exhausted and stressed. The ward felt and looked chaotic. When the band six night nurse came on, she came around asking questions. She told us that she needed to find out why there had been the opportunity for a second incident involving the people in question when staff already had knowledge of the first. It's very rare for staff to criticize each other but she was on the war path that night.
There were very ill men who told us they would rape us in our beds.
The staff checked on us often.
One night I was woken by a scream like I have never heard before. A very aggressive lady had come into our room and decided that the lady in the bed left to me was in her bed. This lady was terrifying at that stage in her admission. She had been known to take a sausage off another patient's plate, having walked over to her in the canteen, and then hit her with it. She had a terrifying manner and was easily the scariest patient. She actually had her own room and who knows how she got past the nurses station but she clearly did..l My point is that anyone could access anyone else at any time, provided you weren't on continuous obs.
One patient in the bed next to mine was called Georgia (pseudonym). Some staff still called them George by mistake. It was obvious they had only recently decided to transition. I really liked them and felt no threat from them. In fact, one night when the ward was in chaos, it was all going down and the police had attended multiple times, with many staff going home with bruises/broken skin, I walked into our room and they completely forgot to be female and checked I was alright in exactly the way a decent man would. But what if they hadn't been so lovely? I understand there was nowhere else to put them but no one ever had so much as a conversation about with the women in the room.
It would have been easy to have been assaulted or raped on the ward, despite the best efforts of the staff. There is no security during the night. I did not always think I was going to sleep in a safe environment.