Reflection should be undertaken at the time of assessment meetings in order to personalise and adapt any restrictions with regard to the opening of rooms to each patient catered for. At night, security measures or special surveillance should be put in place in order to prevent unexpected intrusions in rooms. Certain institutions have put bolts in place, enabling patients to lock the doors of their rooms from the inside. However, this solution is not always appropriate, depending upon individual fears and pathologies. In one institution visited, a motion detection system had been placed in the corridor; it is switched on every evening at 11 p.m. and alerts staff when movements are recorded; the latter can then go to the given place, in order to find out the reasons for leaving the room. However, this system is only possible in so far as the rooms are equipped with toilets. Generally speaking, the CGLPL considers that rooms catering for persons hospitalised without their consent should be equipped with bathroom facilities including, as a minimum, a sink and toilet. Priority should be given to the presence of staff for the organisation of night surveillance in units; however, movement detection systems may be envisaged, as long as, and on the sole condition that the premises concerned are located out of view of staff at night. Since the room belongs to the patient’s private sphere, and is acknowledged as a living area, it should be possible for it to be occupied in a personal manner. Yet, it is striking to ascertain that rooms in hospitals are rarely decorated and contain few personal items. Indeed, on pretexts relating to cleanliness or aesthetics, few institutions visited authorise any personal decoration. In particular, it is rare to find institutions that have installed noticeboards, enabling postcards, drawings and photos to be pinned up. In one of the institutions visited, the recently repainted walls no longer had the noticeboards which, before the repainting, had enabled decoration of the room. Some institutions consider that double rooms cannot provide patients with the opportunity of making a space their own, others only authorise family photos. In one unit for difficult psychiatric patients (UMD), the rooms are bare and impersonal, with no photos or any personal items, the cupboards even being located outside of the rooms. The CGLPL raises the question of the possibility of restoring a personal and positive image to neutral, empty premises, in which all expression of individuality is banned. Moreover, it considers that the right to have personal items, in places where people stay for long periods, contributes to respect for the individual’s right to privacy and private life. For this reason, it considers that rooms should be equipped with noticeboards on the walls enabling patients to decorate their living area, whatever the length of their stay. Furthermore, patients staying in hospitals on a long-term basis should be encouraged to bring personal items, enabling them to personalise and make their rooms their own. The Right to Sexuality Sexual relations between patients are in general prohibited in psychiatric departments, this prohibition sometimes being formalised in the institution’s internal rules and regulations or rules of life. The European Court of Human Rights has on several different occasions asserted that the right to sexuality, “which is one of the most intimate aspects of the private sphere”, is a fundamental freedom protected by article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights 115. 115 See for example ECtHR 1st Feb. 2005, KA and Ad, App. no. 4275/98, 45558/99; ECtHR 22nd Oct. Dudgeon v. United Kingdom, App. no. 7525/76. 131