I don't smoke but when I was inpatient the smoke breaks were the one bright spot in an otherwise miserable day. All the patients knew when the smoke breaks were and we counted the minutes until we could go outside and just feel human for a moment.

It doesn't make any sense that they would be so worried about the effects of smoking when the food they serve is literally dripping in grease, no opportunities for exercise are offered, and people are half asleep on antipsychotics that cause obesity, hypertension, & diabetes. Maybe instead of forcing people to stop smoking they could start with offering healthy foods and opportunities for exercise.

The quality of life in a state psychiatric hospital is shit. And they are determined to make it even shittier for patients. Good job!

What are they going to threaten patients with now that they've taken away their smoke breaks? THat was always the big threat when I was in the hospital, "If you don't do a, b, or c then you can't go outside."

You asked about the staff who smoke. I suspect they will do what they do at every other hospital with a no smoking policy - they will violate the policy & go smoke in their cars in the parking lot.

What a brilliant idea. One to make nutters go even crazier... yeah nice one state of Jersey/whatever

The law is intended for the health of people working in the hospital. If psych patients smoke who is going to complain and enforce the rule?
My prediction...
No one working in the hospital wants angry withdrawing-from-nicoteen psych patients. They will put the patients in an official smoking room where staff does not have to go in ( workplace safety rules), and volunteers (hospital staff who willingly smoke) will run the room.

How ironic in a long challenged system: New Jersey claims that it is concerned about patient health at our state psychiatric hospitals yet it has recently cut the number of medical doctors at the same institutions.

Ancora, the state's largest psychiatric hospital, is the subject of a US Department of Justice investigation and http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2009/05/greystone_park_psychiatric_hos.html">Greystone still can't get its act together despite 30 years of Doe v. Klein monitoring.

Half of the patients in New Jersey's state psychiatric hospitals remain trapped on Conditional Extension Pending Placement there for want of housing, services and supports in the community.

The state represents mental health consumers as being empowered and having choice yet one choice which would be afforded them in the community is denied.

Where New Jersey has achieved too little and promised so much for so long at our state psychiatric hospitals it now seeks to evidence change by imposing it on the backs of very patients it has served so poorly.

[New Jersey is far from being alone in achieving too little but representing too much; words are always easy. The tragedy is that the words are so often believed despite the grim reality.]

While I am no big fan of tobacco (I quit Sept 25 last year) I think the ban is ludicrous and I hope they recant.

From what I've seen, withdrawing from nicotine can cause some serious weird interactions with meds, and/or psychotic breaks in the MI population. I am by no means pro-smoking (just the opposite, my parents' heavy smoking in enclosed spaces gave me terrible chronic bronchitis) but this is just wrong.

Dose that mean the patients and workers have to step off the property.
Where is the compassion in these hospitals?

http://smokersclubinc.com
http://pasan.thetruthisalie.com

I've been in too many psych wards as a visitor and witnessed mayhem when smoke breaks were skipped or taken away.

I accompanied (was used as staff with the nurses station number in my cell phone, talk about liability)a group at Western State Hospital to the outside yard so they could get the smoke break in for the day and my daughter could play basketball--hell 15 minutes was all they were getting, and they got told "no smoke break, not enough staff" and I swear fist fights broke out, it was dicey in there.

Another Chantix syndrome will come out of these bans, and the patient will be blamed for their "illness" being the reason for increased psych "symptoms" or "thoughts of suicide" as a result of medications.

Then more meds will be added, to decrease agitation and attempt to cover up withdrawals, come on for the good of the patients, my ass!

ALL of the staff go out for smoke breaks too, my God coping in those places is hard enough, I think my kid was the only person in the entire ward/unit/floor who didn't smoke and they also used smoking as a ploy to get ppl to take meds and take away smoke breaks as med compliance coercion. Because my daughter didn't smoke they flat out took away her outside fresh air time until I told them the ACLU would hear about it.

Nanny states suck, just another injustice and smack in the face of the indignity people with mental health labels face every single day. Treated as if they are less than human, and frankly, I am sick of it.

Nothing done at psychiatric hospitals would surprise me as they are state approved prisons for people who have had no trial and are deemed to have no rights to avoid cruel and unusual punishment because they are being treated, not punished.

When I was in the psych hospital, smoke breaks were one bright spot and when you're living on a locked ward with bars on the windows and no hope, with less civil rights than people in conventional prisons, fashioning maxi pads out of toilet paper and not brushing your teeth or using deodorant because neither toothbrush, toothpaste nor deodorant is provided, lying around in a hospital gown twitching from the drugs, legally forced away from your job, your friends, your pets, legally billed 1000g a day with no consent, smoking is a welcome break.

Don't even ask how you get an orderly to give you a smoke. Physical abuse, like Shari Roan says, doesn't matter when it happens to one labeled as severely mentally ill, as those so labeled are sub human so it just can't be abuse to harm them, after all they don't feel and if their "thought disorders" trouble us non smi, we are entitled to beat the muther f*ck out of them.

Really convicted criminals have a right to smoke and to go outside, breath fresh air, but not those labeled as "mentally ill." Sh*t

Intereting. I don't smoke, but when I was inpatient at a private university hospital, there were no smoke breaks; anyone who smoked was required to use a nicotine patch during daylight hours.

Thoughts?

West Seattle Psych announced today that they are going non-smoking in August

Banning smoking altogether is going to be a serious problem for the staff. Using cigarettes as leverage is a common and probably the most effective way to enforce compliance.

At our local bin, patients have to move off the grounds to smoke. Unfortunately, that puts them on the sidewalk by a pretty busy road. It's pretty embarrassing to be standing there in your hospital jammies taking a puff but, hey, smoking is about the only thing to live for when you're incarcerated. I quit three months ago but I'd start again in an instant if I ended up back on the ward.

The latest from one of the two New Jersey state psychiatric hospitals where a smoking ban has been instituted, Ancora Psychiatric Hospital worker charged with sexual assault of patient.

I don't smoke. I was a week at Sainte Anne's Mental Hospital in Paris after a mother of an episode ending in delirium.

The patients smoked in the TV room, some of the staff smoked in their staff room. There was actual laughter in the cafeteria sometimes.

The Washington State psych ward, the only other hospital I've been in, we were treated more inhumanely, and that was 1992, not that long ago - yeah, they could smoke outside in a caged area. In France, once fairly sane, we got a free pass for a half hour walk on the street or staff would walk with us. Much better.

I firmly disagree with the smoking ban, but what can we do? I wonder if even outside the US smoking bans are being enforced.

Haven't you all seen One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest? ("I want MY cigarettes Nurse Ratchet!")

As an intern in a residential crisis center, I saw that smoke breaks were tremendously helpful. It was the one time out of the day when folks felt like regular people. I got to know people better during 10 minute smoke breaks than I did in groups, and that's a fact.

They are doing the same thing here in the UK which has always struck me as extremely illiberal but then our present government never tires of telling us how much we should eat, drink, how many times we should brush our teeth, wipe our arses and how to tie our shoe laces so no surprise there.

Is it true that they have banned smoking on death row on health grounds or is this an urban legend?

Either make cigarettes officially illegal and stop benefiting from the "vice taxes", or stop the ever-increasing piles of restrictions, rules and bylaws that makes the use of this LEGAL PRODUCT effectively impossible.

They have banned smoking on all hospital campuses here in Michigan. What a great way to further drive people off the deep end. I think that mental health patients deserve to have a break and if that break included smoking a cigarette, than so be it. The drugs cause far more harm in my opinion.