Patients hospitalized in acute care psychiatric settings often complain of boredom. Neither historical context nor geographical settings seem to make a difference. Boredom can be found in contemporary studies and older studies, in studies in the United States and the United Kingdom (Raphael, 1974; Raphael andPeers, 1972; Shields, Morrison, andHart, 1988; Thomas, Shattell, andMartin, 2002). Boredom does not seem to correlate to how long a person has been in the hospital or model of health care delivery. Perhaps you can understand how patients would get bored after a 2-3 month stay as was customary in the past, but not today, with short 3-5 day hospitalizations. How do patients have time to be bored?
