6(A)(ii). Cage beds and bodily functions
A male patient at Kosmonosy Psychiatric Hospital said he had been in a cage bed six or seven times, always during the night, and released at approximately 6am the next day. He recalled how two other patients helped staff to place him in the cage bed. He said was given an injection against his will, which made him fall asleep. He explained how he wanted to go to the toilet, to which the staff responded: “hold it”. He said he felt bad about being in a cage bed and that he should not have been put in one.
Forced to urinate in a bottle
Many patients raised the issue of urination and defecation in a cage bed.64
A 36-year old male patient at Kosmonosy Psychiatric Hospital explained how he had been strapped into a cage bed on two occasions, for approximately three days each time. Patients were routinely strapped on admission, he said, and other residents helped staff to do this. “You become an animal in there,” he said, explaining how patients were not allowed to go to the toilet while strapped in a cage bed: they were given a bottle to use.
“In the cage bed it’s really unpleasant that you can’t go to the bathroom, you can’t brush your teeth”, said one female patient at Kosmonosy Psychiatric Hospital. A 59-year-old woman at the same institution told MDAC about a corner room which had five cage beds. They were for people “who cannot hold their urine and faeces,” she said, adding that that patients went in at 7pm and were let out at 7am.
A 60-year old male patient from the elderly ward at Kosmonosy Psychiatric Hospital told MDAC that cage beds were used for “naughty” patients, and those who became aggressive, often following arguments about cigarettes. He told MDAC about a patient on his ward who was in a cage bed all the time. Patients have no chance to go to the toilet in cage beds: he sometimes had to change the bed linen in the mornings, and he reported seeing urine and faeces on the sheets, despite the fact that many caged patients were required to wear nappies. He said that nurses brought meals and tea for patients to eat in their cage beds.
Three years in a cage bed due to ‘restlessness’
A 70-year old woman who had lived at Kosmonosy Psychiatric Hospital for three years told MDAC that she wanted to get out.
She recounted how she had spent each night for the previous three years in a cage bed. She said she did not understand why she was put inside the cage bed. She reported feeling degraded. Inside the cage bed she had no visual or other contact with patients or staff. She told MDAC how she often called for help, but that “nobody shows up”. She therefore stopped calling for help.
64 Although later standards have called for a ban on cage beds, even the CPT in 2007 said it was “unacceptable” to give a person in a cage bed a urination bottle, rather than let them go to the toilet. CPT Report to the Czech Government on the visit to the Czech Republic carried out by the CPT from 27 March to 7 April 2006 and from 21 to 24 June 2006, (CPT/Inf (2007) 32, 12 July 2007), para. 114.