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The contrast between The Retreat and modern psychiatric inpatient settings could not be more dramatic. For a medical and psychiatric system preoccupied with evidence-based best practices, clearly the Retreat experience indicates that the creation of a homelike environment could reduce the violence and the need for restraints and seclusion rooms that often plague our modern psychiatric hospitals. The symbol speaks to the historic failure to develop crisis services that are conducive to healing mental illness. When in psychological distress, being in an environment not designed with mental illness in mind, sets the stage for the type of care from which the Quakers rebelled.