Seclusion is a traumatizing event for patients in the psychiatric settings. This intervention is being vigorously reevaluated as psychiatric hospitals across the country strive towards seclusion and restraint free environments. Often patients’ experience of seclusion include feeling of shame, isolation, and abandonment. These feelings and negative experiences are inconsistent with the model of recovery promoting the instillation of hope and preservation of dignity.

      This alternative approach is a multi-step nursing intervention. Patients are administered an anxiety scale upon admission. Psych-educational nursing groups educate patients on identifying the symptoms and triggers of anxiety. Then patients become familiar with their own methods of relaxation by using Multi Sensory Relaxation Room (MSRR). The MSRR combines three methods of relaxation, visual imagery (a painted back porch scene of a southern home and the fishing pond fills the visual field), aromatherapy (lavender infusion), the sounds of nature and music (brains alpha wave). Pre test and post tests measures the patients understanding of anxiety and the continuous monitoring of vital signs helps the patients to realize their own contribution to the control of anxiety (bio feed-back)

       Most important function of MSRR is to help patients who are extremely anxious and need to have reduced stimulation for their own safety or others. Post intervention, semi structure interviews of six patients who were secluded in the MSRR had a very strong positive over views of the patients’ experiences. . One patient asked her nurse to use the room for relaxation next day after seclusion. Another patient wrote “After being restrained by the local officers and sent to the psychiatric ward, I felt calm and naturally at ease inside your room with the land escape wallpaper, which I believe you call Retreat..