On a day-to-day basis, we don't even think about what it might be like to live in a total institution. Most of us probably wonder what a total institution stands for. Well, it is another world, so to speak, which is governed by its own rules. A place set apart from the rest, where the word barrier is the order of the day. They can be social care homes, psychiatric hospitals, prisons, correctional institutions, sanatoriums, work camps or monasteries or convents.