The use of environmental seclusion in psychiatric settings: A multidimensional scalogram analysis

Morrison, P. (1990) The use of environmental seclusion in psychiatric settings: A multidimensional scalogram analysis. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 10 (4). pp. 353-362.

Abstract

Environmentalseclusion is one of the key strategies for dealing with disturbed and dangerous behaviour in psychiatric patients. The continued use of seclusion has also been widely criticized. Few empirical studies have been completed to explore in detail the practice of seclusion. In this study, official records of incidents of seclusion in one acute psychiatric unit were examined. These were analysed using the multidimensional scaling (MDS) procedure known as multidimensionalscalogramanalysis (MSA-I) to explore relationships within the data set. Two sets of relationships were observed from the analysis. The sex of the patient, the status of the patient and the length of time spent in seclusion were found to be closely related. In addition, the time of day when the seclusion was initiated, the staffing levels, the grade and sex of the nurse authorizing the seclusions were also found to be closely related. A number of possible reasons for these unexpected findings are provided and suggestions for further research in the field are outlined.