Everyday objects as therapeutic elements in psychiatric wards: a theoretical design framework to strengthen patients’ valorization and control

Abstract

Concerning inpatient mental healthcare, the fields of design and architecture face enormous challenges. While focussing on meeting high safety and anti-ligature standards, many psychiatric facilities are designed as highly institutionalized settings. This institutionalization neglects essential psychosocially supportive elements, which promote health, wellbeing, as well as social interaction of patients and staff. With the aim of changing such institutional structures on a small scale and in an easily implementable manner, a new framework on how everyday objects could decrease institutionalization in psychiatric facilities is proposed. This framework includes two separate mechanisms: (1) design-induced priming of the concept of valorization and (2) increasing patients’ sense of control through everyday objects. As psychiatric environments affect patients as well as staff, we advocate using participatory approaches to determine the selection of product categories and styles of such objects.

Keywords:

• Mental healthcare design
• institutionalization
• evidence-based design
• priming
• psychosocially supportive design

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the SURF (North London Service User Research Forum) co-chaired by Prof. Helen Killaspy for providing guidance on the proposed research project based on which this framework has been developed. Further, we thank Eleftheria Savvopoulou for her support in management, bibliography and layout.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research received no external funding.

This research received no external funding.

Notes on contributors

Jonas Rehn-Groenendijk

Dr. Jonas Rehn-Groenendijk is senior design researcher at Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences and holds a doctorate in design research. His research interests include design for health promotion and health behaviour change as well as public health. His methodological focus is on co-creational approaches, empirical design research and evidence-based design.

Evangelia Chrysikou

Dr. Evangelia Chrysikou, RIBA, is medical architect, Associate Professor at the Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction UCL and Director MSc Healthcare Facilities. Vice-President of the Urban Health Section, EUPHA. Member of the Board, National Accessibility Authority in Greece. Research interests include: medical architecture, healthcare facilities design, mental health, accessibility, autism, health services research and health tourism.

Helena Müller

Dr. Helena Müller is a researcher at Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences. She holds degrees in psychology from Heidelberg University and Frankfurt/Main University. Her main research interests include environmental, clinical and architectural psychology with special focus on housing and ageing.