Center Path Institute's West Building is its de facto psychiatric ward. A lot of effort is made by the administrative group--especially Constantine, the founder--to label it as anything but a psychiatric ward, but it's an open secret at this point, if it was even meant to be secret all. It's one of the oldest buildings on the outside, but the inside has been refurbished more than any other building on campus, probably in order to fit in more security options or something.

The building itself is meant for 'high risk' individuals to live in; suicide risks, self-harm risks, and people who have any kind of provable likelihood that they'll hurt themselves or others in any way. A lot of the time, it barely feels like the West Building is even part of a school campus. It feels much more like they, for whatever reason, built a school a few hundred feet away from a psychiatric ward.

Although I said earlier that it's for high risk students, it's not like they're wheeling in cannibals and serial killers to put up in chains in an oubliette. There's at least some level of therapy and psychiatric care undertaken, with the ultimate goal to empty out the building and never use it again. I've never been inside (they don't let people inside unless they have a reason) (I tried) so I can't speak on what the conditions are like, and the people inside tend not to be talkative.

Zoey sometimes mentions that Penny has to be housed in this building from time-to-time, so I wonder if it's part of their treatment program to expose their patients to 'normalcy', and let them adjust to it and eventually reintegrate inside. What ever that means.