They're probably all different. The one I did for a couple of weeks last year was 9-3:30, with an hour and ten minutes off for lunch. No locked doors, no restrictions, you could come and go as you wanted to - they kept stressing that this was voluntary. Lunch, for example, they gave everyone a $10 voucher for the cafeteria or food court, which was nice - I checked that out fast, I was so ashamed I wondered if these vouchers were identifiable as coming from the psych dept, but I found out they give them out to all kinds of people, such as visiting professionals there to attend training or seminars. So most days I ate there, a couple of times I needed to get away emotionally so I went to some of my regular lunch places in the area (this hospital is 2 miles from my office).

Similar to above, there was a set routine, a morning meeting, then recreation therapy, then the md's would see patients one to one for about 5-10 minutes, the rest of that hour was down time, then an hour of what they called psych education, then lunch, then group therapy for about 2 hours, then relaxation therapy, then a short wrap up meeting.

I was terrified, broken, and utterly humiliated to go to this. I was never given any information ahead of time, so I didn't know what to expect. I thought it might be like in the movies, they would drug me up so bad all I could do was drool on myself. Of course, considering that people had to drive home, I guess it wasn't realistic to think that. I wan really glad that the program nurse-case manager was really nice. The guy who was the group therapist was brilliant but a little reserved.

There were no restrictions on cell phones or computers, I took both, they just asked that you be courteous, put phones on vibrate, only take calls if really important, etc. No sign in or out per-SE, but the dept. secretary checked you off as you came through the door each morning.

It was weird, I thought it would be really horrible, and I actually enjoyed it a lot in many ways. It did help. I was there a couple of weeks, but one woman was there for4 months, her last day was also my last day, she had to leave because she hit her insurance limit.