The necessary rules of the ward should be explained; they should be invited to their meals, shown to their rooms and told at bedtime the night watch will visit them, and they must be assured that no harm will come to them.
The first impressions a new patient receives may be the lasting ones, and influence their whole conduct in the asylum. If they resist what is necessary to do for them, do not struggle and contend with them, and force them to bed, or to the bath, but first seek advice from the supervisor, or the physician.
Always search new patients, unless otherwise ordered, for money, jewelry, weapons, medicine, and other like articles, or if in doubt what to do ask for directions. The head, body, and clothing should be examined for vermin, and the body for injuries and bruises. If what is wished to be done in this particular is explained, patients will generally quietly allow it.
Work, Employment, and Occupation.—By this is meant whatever occupies the patient’s time and mind, in useful and pleasant ways.
Of all things idleness and loafing are the worst; even games, such as billiards and cards, if indulged in to the exclusion of useful employment, will degenerate a patient.
Some willing patients are kept in a tread-mill of daily work, their monotonous life never broken by a diversion, an enjoyment, or a hope. It is very questionable if it is beneficial to make a patient drudge through such a daily routine.
Asylum life should be made as home-like, pleasant, and natural as possible; as a rule every patient who is able should do some useful work every day, and to this should be added the diversion, that comes from amusements and the enjoyment of innocent pleasures.
Occupation then means a great deal more than work; it is the way a patient spends his time. Unless encouraged and directed, patients may occupy themselves in thinking of their delusions, in noise, violence, or destructiveness, in idly walking up and down the wards, in the indulgence of secret vices, in gossip, in spreading discontent, in prayer, or in constant Bible reading. Some patients really work hard trying to do nothing, and have no more ambition than to sit around on the ward, and chew tobacco, and indulge in idleness.
Patients should be encouraged to do something for themselves, the women to make and mend their own clothes, to keep their rooms in good order, and assist about the ward. They should be made to feel that they can add to their own comfortable surroundings by their own efforts.
For the men, ward work is not so natural or tasteful, but they will do with interest much of this kind of work; to this may be added employment in decorating their own rooms or the ward, and in caring for plants and flowers.