sustained by patients or staff. This will greatly facilitate both the management of such incidents and the oversight of the extent of their occurrence. The Act on protection of mental health of 19 August 1994 (Dz. U. No. 111 item 535 as amended) Art. 18 paragraph 1. While performing activities referred to by this Act, direct restraint can be applied to persons with psychiatric disturbances only when this Act authorises such restraint or when those persons: 1) make an attempt against: a) their own life or health, or against life or health of another person, or b) against public security, or 2) violently destroy or damage objects in their surroundings, or 3) seriously interfere with the functioning of a psychiatric establishment or a social assitance unit, or make it impossible to function at all. [...] paragraph 6. Application of direct restraint to the person referred to in paragraph 1, points 1 and 2, may take the form of manual holding, forced application of medication, immobilisation or seclusion; while application of direct restraint to the person referred to in paragraph 1, point 3, may take the form of manual holding or forced application of medication. In two establishments, practices that bore the hallmarks of cruel and inhuman treatment of patients were found. In the Regional Independent Mental Health Care Centre at ul. Nowowiejska in Warsaw, residential rooms for patients were separated from the corridor by a transparent wall, which allowed a constant unlimited observation of these rooms.Moreover, two observation rooms in the form of a booth with transparent walls were separated within the ward, where coercive measure in the form of isolation and immobility is applied. Residential rooms and observation “booths” with transparent glass walls raised substantial doubts among the visitors, since they collided with the obligation to protect the inherent and inalienable dignity of a human patient and to respect his right to intimacy and protection of own image. Therefore, it was recommended to take necessary steps to adjust these rooms to the requirements providing the respect for the patients' rights. In reply, the Director of the Hospital stated that the main purpose of glass walls of observation rooms was to allow the supervision over the patient’s safety, in accordance with care standards at intensive psychiatric care wards, where the observation of the entire room is recommended. However, the Director admitted that this could constitute a limitation of the right to privacy to a certain degree. The hospital administration is trying to find compromise between patient’s security and privacy. In the same establishment, it was also recommended to immediately refrain from discriminatory and stigmatizing practices towards patients involuntarily admitted to the hospital, namely the obligation to wear pajamas for the whole day. In reply, the director explained that some patients are admitted to the hospital in a bad hygienic condition, in dirty, worn-out and sometimes lousy clothes. Therefore, changing these clothes into pajamas is recognized as necessary. During interviews with visitors, patients of the Regional Psychiatric Hospital in Lubiąż complained about occasional cases of being treated in a rude and disrespectful way. Representatives of the National Preventive Mechanism observed that the