FEATURE ARTICLES

Jason Brown, director of Design and Development at Knightsbridge Furniture, takes a look at some of the key considerations – including the challenge of balancing appealing aesthetics and a therapeutic, non-institutional feel with safety and security – when designing and manufacturing furniture for mental healthcare settings.

Robin Graham, an associate director at Gilling Dod Architects, describes the practice’s design of Park House – a new inpatient mental health facility at North Manchester General Hospital that will replace one of the largest remaining dormitory-based such units in the UK, and will also be one of the first multi-level mental health units with roof gardens in the north of England.

Philip Verner explains how CEM Systems can help mental healthcare facilities maintain a ‘zero-risk strategy’ to protecting staff, service-users, & visitors, by providing absolute control as to who can go where and when, within their building or sites

James Christian, an architect and director, and Creative strategist and director, Megan Charnley, report on the practice’s design of the interior of the CAMHS unit at Edinburgh’s new Royal Hospital for Children and Young People.

The Design in Mental Health Network has always recognised the value of hearing from serviceusers on their experiences in a variety of mental healthcare settings – something reflected in a number of presentations at last August’s DiMH 2021 conference

The Design in Mental Health Network’s 2021 AGM, held ‘virtually’ on 3 November, saw reports presented by Chair, Philip Ross, and Treasurer, Phil Barsby, as well as the leads of the DiMHN’s various Workstreams

Mark Carter, Partner, and Victor Muniz, Architectural director at the firm, explain the planned consolidation of the new facility, and their approach to 21st-century mental health design.

In November last year, construction started on the £60 m redevelopment of the medium secure service provision at Northgate Hospital in Morpeth, Northumberland.

A new Design in Mental Health Network guide to designing ‘with borders and boundaries in mind’ was unveiled on the first day of August’s DiMH 2021 conference at the Coventry Building Society Arena.

August’s Design in Mental Health 2021 conference and exhibition in Coventry saw the presentation of ten DiMH 2021 awards recognising outstanding achievement, creativity, and innovation.

Speaking at the DiMH 2021 conference, Jane Ray, head of Hospital Inspections at the CQC, gave an insight into the CQC’s role in the mental health arena, and a service-user described her difficult experience as a as an inpatient

Within a mental health facility, designing or upgrading system infrastructure is a challenge – fire alarms systems being no exception

Julian Hall, Sales director at Kingsway Group, describes the company’s ‘five-step approach’ to door safety, developed with the benefit and experience of many hundreds of successful installations in mental healthcare facilities.

Joe Forster, recalls the DIMHN’s earliest days, and explains how its origins lie in shifts in thinking early in the new Millennium about the sort of environments that were needed to provide effective 21st-century mental healthcare.

Dr Christina Malathouni, and Haziq Khairi, University who has been working with her on research into mental health facilities UK-wide, consider Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust’s ‘unique approach’ to its contemporary mental health facilities.

Last November’s ‘virtual’ Design in Mental Health Network 2020 AGM saw Jenny Gill, among the organisation’s longest-standing members, and the Network’s Chair since 2013, step down from both the role and the DiMHN Board.

How a fascinating historical site, and a close working relationship between Kajima, Sir Robert McAlpine, and a Mental Health NHS Trust, has helped unlock the estate modernisation of the Springfield University Hospital in Wandsworth.

The Design in Mental Health Network and multidisciplinary building science centre, BRE have jointly developed a guide to testing a broad spectrum of products used in mental healthcare facilities to ensure fitness for purpose.

Freelance writer, Debbie Giggle, talks to Antonio Lourenco, Global Product manager at Altro, about what the flooring and wall cladding specialist dubs ‘an innovative collaborative research project to assist safety and wellbeing in acute mental health wards through better design of buildings, components, fixtures, and fittings’.

Design engineers, Safehinge Primera, are passionate about working alongside mental healthcare providers to develop products that create safe spaces for recovery.