The Scottish government said the issue should be addressed as a priority, following recent guidance published by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission about single-sex spaces.
HIS chief inspector Donna Maclean said concerns had been raised about both the use of prone restraint and the lack of physical health monitoring during and after the restraint taking place.
The National Institute for Healthcare and Clinical Excellence (NICE) states manual restraint should not routinely be used for longer than 10 minutes, and prone restraint should be for as short a time as possible.
However the report noted: “We observed five incident reports submitted as evidence detailing the use of prone restraint.
“The majority of these were to enable the administration of intramuscular medication due to stress and distress including violence and aggression.
“This included one incident where, although no patient harm was noted, it is documented that the restraint lasted for approximately one hour.
“However, it is not clear if the patient was restrained in the prone position for all of the duration.”
Some of the cases did not have documentation detailing how long the patients were restrained for.
The full inspection, external resulted in four areas of good practice being highlighted, three recommendations and 12 requirements.
It covered three mental health wards and an intensive psychiatric care unit.
