Opening the door on a locked psychiatric unit

A therapeutic milieu on acute locked psychiatric units is difficult to establish and maintain. The stigma of being on a locked unit and the absence of a sufficiently compelling goal around which patients can mobilize as a group are two factors that contribute to this difficulty. By opening the door under specific conditions, we were able to affect both these factors significantly. In this article, we describe the issue of feasibility, the technical devices employed, and seven months' experience with this system.