# Institution: Ward

**Involuntary psychiatric commitment for RimWorld 1.6 — the third pawn state, neither free nor guilty.**

> **The psychiatric-care layer of the [Institution](https://git.arch.fyi/flan/institution)
> suite.** Ward runs on Core's shared treatment engine and ships bundled in the single Institution
> install with a toggle of its own; it still installs standalone (needing only Institution: Core and
> Harmony). Once a separate sister mod, now folded in.

RimWorld gives a person exactly two places to stand: **colonist**, or **prisoner**. There is no
third state for someone who is neither free nor guilty. Out of the box you cannot commit anyone. A
colonist breaks, wanders off, punches a wall, recovers on their own, and goes back to hauling steel
as though nothing happened. Mental breaks are episodic and amnesiac — nothing persists, nothing is
*done* about them.

Ward adds the missing state, and the room to put it in. A colonist you arrest can be set to
**psychiatric care**. Wardens counsel them at a **treatment station**. A room with prisoner beds
and a treatment station is a **psychiatric ward**, not a prison cell. Treatment lowers the patient's
mental-break threshold while it lasts — and it fades, so it has to be *sustained*. A ward you don't
staff is worse than no ward at all.

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## The third state RimWorld doesn't have

The reason "commit a colonist" isn't a stock button is simple: vanilla only knows two kinds of held
person — a free colonist and a prisoner. There's no built-in slot for someone who is neither free nor
guilty, which is why other mods that keep a not-quite-colonist around (like *Hospitality* and its
guests) have to work so hard to maintain them.

**Ward takes the cheap road.** A committed pawn *is* a prisoner — arresting your own colonist already
does that. Ward just adds a new **way to handle** that prisoner: a "psychiatric care" mode you toggle
on, sitting alongside vanilla's recruit / convert / release options. Nothing exotic — it's the same
kind of custom prisoner mode other prison mods already add.

So committing someone is entirely ordinary from the game's point of view:

- **psychiatric care** — a new prisoner interaction mode you switch on
- **the psychiatric ward** — a new room role a cell earns once it holds a treatment station
- **counselling** — a new warden job, handled like any other warden work
- the **treatment station**, the **recovery**, the **neglect** — new content layered on top

Because Ward *adds* things rather than rewriting how vanilla prisoners behave, it sits quietly next to
the popular psych and prison mods instead of fighting them. Which mods, and why, is on the
**Compatibility** page.

---

## Riding the prisoner rail (why the suite cares)

The choice that makes Ward *cheap* also makes it *interesting* inside the wider Institution suite. A
committed patient is a genuine vanilla prisoner. That means they're a **held pawn** in exactly the
sense the rest of the suite understands: someone who can be searched, and who can conceal and
improvise contraband. A patient in a psych ward can hoard a shiv or brew something foul in a smuggled
vessel, because the contraband, search, corruption and gang systems already work on any held
prisoner — and a ward patient is one, for free.

**And re-labelling a cell as a ward never lets anyone out.** A ward is a prison cell that also happens
to be a ward — the two roles coexist. Containment, food delivery, and prison breaks all keep working
exactly as they did before you built the station.

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## Wiki index

| Page | What's on it |
|---|---|
| **Home** (this page) | What Ward is, the third-state problem, the suite |
| **Commitment** | How commitment works in play: the care mode, the station, the ward room, the warden's job, treatment, recovery, neglect, and how it stacks with recruitment — with the real numbers |
| **Compatibility** | Which popular psych and prison mods Ward plays nicely with, and why it doesn't fight them |

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## Part of the Institution suite

A set of RimWorld 1.6 mods about what an institution does to the people inside it. Each mod stands
alone as an install; together they interlock into one system — colonists and prisoners drift toward
crime on a spectrum of nature × nurture, and a policing/justice layer discovers, catches, punishes,
reforms, or paroles them. Ward's psychiatric ward is a secure context where a committed patient can
conceal and improvise contraband exactly as a prisoner can, because they ride the same prisoner rail.

| Mod | What it is |
|---|---|
| **Institution: Ward** (this) | Involuntary psychiatric commitment — the third pawn state, neither free nor guilty. |
| **Institution: Core** | The shared engine — propensity (nature × nurture), the criminal record, secured context. |
| **Institution: Contraband** | The physical smuggling loop — conceal, improvise shivs, dig Prison-Architect tunnels, warden search, warden corruption. |
| **Institution: Justice** | Corrections & policing — classification, deterrence, discipline, parole, regime. |
| **Institution: Gangs** | Gangs as contraband economies — joining, smuggling networks, rivalry, fights-as-crime. |
| **Foul Play** | The vessel + substance + throw framework, and the "Piss Nuke" flagship; bridges to Core + Contraband when both are present. |

Reference sibling mods by name — the mods are separate repositories and cross-repo links break.

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