ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the experience of hospitalization, discusses the ways in which patients are admitted, and then gives an account of the freedoms they experience and the constraints to which they are subject in the course of their daily lives. Most patients entering the larger hospitals will have been seen by the medical superintendent at an out-patient clinic before admission; an important exception may be cases sent direct from the Courts. The efficiency of any large scale bureaucracy is dependent upon the smooth running and orderly activity of all its departments. Little tolerance can be extended to behaviour which is likely to be disruptive to the life of the ward and even the mildest of disturbed behaviour must be 'treated' before it spreads to other members of the community; usually this is achieved by the use of sedatives.
