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[birdman]

The following is explicitly to be used in emergencies for dwarves who are suddenly experiencing more stress than you're prepared for. You should still strive to generate as many happy thoughts in your fortress through other means, be they mist generators, fine furniture, legendary rooms, or all of the above.

So. One of your dwarves is suddenly drowning in stress. Maybe more than one! You don't have the time to make a mist generator, and it won't even do the job as fully as you need it to be done. What's a fortress overseer to do when a dwarf is now incapable of focusing on work due to constant oblivious wandering around the halls!

The answer, my friends, is deceptively simple. Build yourself a Dwarven Sanitarium, and no, i'm not talking about a 2x2 spike execution room. I'm talking about this:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The design is pretty standard fare for managing dwarves' mental health, except it requires no mist generators, as well as only a few nice pieces of nice furniture and some engraving to increase room quality. The REAL source of happy thoughts is what you see in the back, a large hallway of dug out tunnels SPECIFICALLY for stacked engraving jobs.

To get started, carve out an entrance room or hallway as a buffer between your fort and the sanitarium, in case of tantrum. Ensure that you also have a prepared food and drink stockpile in the sanitarium, and that it is full before you seal the dwarves in. The Sanitarium should have a Great or better Bedroom and Dining room, as well as a temple to be continuously reallocated to whatever gods the depressed dwarves worship. Prayer is a big mood stabilizer as well.

The MOST IMPORTANT part of the Dwarven Sanitarium is the carving halls. In the back, dig out a 1-wide tunnel as long as you should desire, the longer the better, and jutting out from that tunnel dig out several tunnels going horizontally, with two blocks between them to allow for maximum engraving surfaces. Smooth this ENTIRE tunnel complex before beginning operation, as engraving gives better mood boosts than smoothing for your mentally ill dwarves.

Once all these steps are complete, simply make a burrow over the sanitarium, assign your mentally ill dwarves to said burrow, and unassign all labors from said dwarves aside from hauling (you never know!) and stone detailing. Designate the ENTIRE BACK AREA for engraving, and let them run loose.

It will be slow at first, as they will still be learning stone detailing from the engraving.  At the very least, practicing a craft and being satisfied at work will stabilize their stress levels somewhat, as will the prayer, fine food, drink, and rooms. HOWEVER, once they reach the higher levels of stone detailing they will start creating masterpieces, and not long after that CHAIN masterpieces due to the inherent way that labors level faster the better you are at them. Enough chain masterpieces combined with the other amenities the Sanitarium provide will outright KICK all negative thoughts out of a dwarf's mind, even with the way unhappy thoughts work now, and you will be left with a completely cured, happy dwarf. Dwarves at a stress level of roughly 40,000 or greater have a chance of being unable to recover using this method, but it has so far had a 100% success rate for dwarves below that point.

The example I posted above is pretty small and meant for only one dwarf, and it's not even exactly the way I described it as I've come up with a few minor refinements since its usage. I know people have been having a lot of trouble with unhappy thoughts since 44.11 and I was hoping this contribution would help others to deal with stress, both dwarven and real.

[Saiko Kila]

Do you assign the bedroom to the treated dwarf (and optionally unassign from the previous one), or he sleeps there having no other options? I'm willing to try it on some emos, but I don't know if they will be sad because of parting with their wealth (i.e. xsocksx in their original cabinet).

[birdman]

Yes the bedroom(s) should be assigned to the dwarf(s). It should also have a container and cabinet because, as you mentioned, you may need to unassign the old room temporarily. Only do that in extreme cases where they need to be isolated from the fortress in case of insanity, so roughly around the time mental breakdowns start getting in the way of their jobs. Otherwise I think it's important to leave the doors unlocked and let them keep their old quarters, as they will still primarily sleep in their sanitarium quarters by the sanitarium since you have food, drink, and their jobs there, but they will also have freedom to socialize and experience other happy thoughts elsewhere, so long as you disable things like refuse and corpse hauling.

[FantasticDorf]

Why not just restrict jobs & burrow citizens with a dormitory & unset beds placed around & food & drink upon arrival by minecart chute with a dining room covering as much of the whole area for legendary thoughts?

I like your idea, least for the most part that it's simple and whittles away extreme need requirements to have some sort of craft, so give them a rock face to doodle on for the time being. Seems like something dwarves would do anyway, etch away doodles into rock to pass the time. Mural sites are always good for big chunks of rock left behind by strip mining a layer, i tend to train miners to directly draft into a elite military squad of pickaxe fighters since its easy to train, so im sure there's a way to worm this in

• While it isn't easily stealable, im quite sure that destroying those masterworks with mining designations would also drive the dwarves insane, whether this should be left alone (no matter how inconvenient it may become later) or weaponised deliberately, i dont know.

[birdman]

Unfortunately, destroyed masterworks seem to only give a single unhappy thought without dramatic weight, which in the grand scheme of things isn't so bad. However, destroying ALL of those masterworks... now that's an easy way to force insanity, using the exact same logic that repeat masterworks cure it.

This DEFINITELY isn't the most efficient way to do this, it's just a simple discovery of the fact that engraving seems to be the most efficient job for curing bad moods through chained-masterwork happy thoughts as well as satisfied at work, legendary room, etc.

[Fleeting Frames]

Destroying all dwarf's masterworks should have the same impact no matter how many masterworks a dwarf has produced (barring rounding down to zero), so repeated masterwork boosts should outdo it. Mining out the walls would be a way to make use of the areas forevermore by engraving the floors, which can then be carved into tracks and smoothed over again with no bad thoughts.

A repeating collect clay & make clay crafts job at magma kiln (or similar thing at glass furnace) seems like it would also work, if you have any clay, at smaller cost to space (and no need to smooth beforehand).
If you're willing to use the melt exploit, repeated creation and melting of (non-masterwork) buckets, coins or whatnot would work on any embark with magma.
On the one hand, it creates items, but on the other hand, no digging. As you can get rid of the items and carve tracks, not sure which is more efficient long-term.

I'm not sure which of these jobs are done faster, though, which is what matters for masterwork production. I know Urist Da Vinci's research had a no-skill dwarf do 1000 items in little over a year, so might be worth a test to see how long it takes for a spherical (1000 in all stats) dwarf to engrave a 31*32+8 tile area.

[FantasticDorf]

Melting has a annoying 10 day wait between job orders, its not recommended other than to actually accrue material bars from goblinite because without micromanaging it the item isn't immediately always queued up as soon as its unforbidden and may be taken back to the pile, requiring another forbid until the 10 day 'cooldown' on the last job is complete on a individual item by item basis (often via use of q-dumps)

Just go with walls & cutting away the amateur corner until you have relevant mural space like @Fleeting Frames said i guess.

[BeetleBorkBoi]

Definitely going to mine one of these out later today, looks cool.

Wish I had taken the time to record this, but similar to what OP is saying:
I had 5 stressed dwarfs, and assigned them all to engraving my residential/suite area. After all was said and done, 3 of the 5 were completely fine, and 2 were still just perpetually stressed. I stuck those 2 in the military, but they haven't been in long enough to determine anything.

[birdman]

Destroying all dwarf's masterworks should have the same impact no matter how many masterworks a dwarf has produced (barring rounding down to zero), so repeated masterwork boosts should outdo it. Mining out the walls would be a way to make use of the areas forevermore by engraving the floors, which can then be carved into tracks and smoothed over again with no bad thoughts.

My thoughts exactly when making this, although I was going to intentionally avoid mining the masterpiece walls but if it's negligible it's negligible.

IMPORTANT NOTE: This method isn't very effective with a dwarf who has inherently poor engraving attributes (kinesthetic, spatial. agility, and creativity) and you should look to other methods that might suit the dwarf's attributes and likes better. Also, if the dwarf keeps attending meetings with the leader (likely) then sealing them in the sanitarium burrow is impossible, as they will stand in one place INDEFINITELY UNTIL STARVATION when trying to attend a meeting outside of their burrow. This, combined with praying, etc, only reduces the amount of time they can spend engraving, which will reduce the effectiveness of this method.

The more I play with it the more I see this technique will not be a guaranteed success, but it will save some lives with minimal micro.

[snow dwarf]

I personally find mining engraving and tree cutting to be the best way of curing dwarfs, the simplest way being mining. The good thought from tree cutting usually gets negated by rain.

[Saiko Kila]

Also, if the dwarf keeps attending meetings with the leader (likely) then sealing them in the sanitarium burrow is impossible, as they will stand in one place INDEFINITELY UNTIL STARVATION when trying to attend a meeting outside of their burrow.
[...]
This, combined with praying, etc, only reduces the amount of time they can spend engraving, which will reduce the effectiveness of this method.

What about extending the burrow to the mayor's office?

As for praying, I've found that none of my dwarves with 0+ stress actually have a need to pray or meditate, nor worship any gods... Which may be reason they are so messed up. You need to have a really strong mental backbone to be agnostic in the world of DF.

[birdman]

Also, if the dwarf keeps attending meetings with the leader (likely) then sealing them in the sanitarium burrow is impossible, as they will stand in one place INDEFINITELY UNTIL STARVATION when trying to attend a meeting outside of their burrow.
[...]
This, combined with praying, etc, only reduces the amount of time they can spend engraving, which will reduce the effectiveness of this method.

What about extending the burrow to the mayor's office?

As for praying, I've found that none of my dwarves with 0+ stress actually have a need to pray or meditate, nor worship any gods... Which may be reason they are so messed up. You need to have a really strong mental backbone to be agnostic in the world of DF.

Interestingly, one of my dwarves seemingly STARTED to worship a deity upon being put in the sanitarium with an unassociated temple. I didn't check her thoughts to see if it had been added after the fact, but she started praying to our society's god of Love and the sun, over and over again, and got decent mood boosts for it, even though she had no listed gods in her thoughts.
Extending the burrow to the mayor's office is a good idea, but would require me to relocate my mayor's office. Something to keep in mind for the future though, I forgot how important a role he plays for stressed dwarves.

I personally find mining engraving and tree cutting to be the best way of curing dwarfs, the simplest way being mining. The good thought from tree cutting usually gets negated by rain.

Is mining really that reliable? Do they not care about the lack of quality and masterworks, they're happy to just be satisfied at workx50?

[Staalo]

I have mainly trouble with those chronically stressed dwarves whose personality profile makes them to naturally rack up to stress level 100 000 and stay there. They seem immune to any kind of luxury and work related happy thoughts, so sanitarium won't work for them.

Inspired by a comment elsewhere I have resorted to shock therapy in hopes of having a beneficial personality reversal from trauma: I'm now assigning them to corpse hauling, hunting or web gathering so they'd have as much exposure to personality altering events as possible. They can't go farther than 100 000 stress, so why not?

So far the most successful patient of this "tough love" type of therapy is Erush Brandeddoor, who after years of being harrowed by the nightmare that was his tragic life, is now a happy productive member of society and is rapidly approaching the opposite end of stress scale. True, he's heavily scarred and crippled for life, but isn't that a small price to pay for such rabid happiness?

[Hyndis]

Inspired by a comment elsewhere I have resorted to shock therapy in hopes of having a beneficial personality reversal from trauma: I'm now assigning them to corpse hauling, hunting or web gathering so they'd have as much exposure to personality altering events as possible. They can't go farther than 100 000 stress, so why not?

A quantum corpse and refuse stockpile in a small tavern room might do the trick. Everyone socializes and makes friend over a pile of rotting corpses. They either go insane or become so immune to horror its no longer an issue. The insane dwarves are expelled from the fortress. Get new migrants, treat them to the same tavern of doom and keep those who pass the test.

One thing I've noticed is that dwarven children like to play around corpses. This can be unfortunate if the corpse pile is at the edge of a map and another siege spawns there, but the constant exposure to corpses means they don't care about anything anymore long before they reach maturity. So it does work. You just need to keep them from breaking long enough to get over it.

[PatrikLundell]

The reason kids play on corpses is that they rush there to snatch up the underwear from the corpses, as there is no way to produce underwear, so the fortress is constantly under supplied. Once there, they then have that location as the last one they did something in, so that's the location they'll use when selecting a position to play in.