Designing better mental healthcare facilities

RECENT FEATURE ARTICLES

Multidisciplinary autism centre ‘akin to a butterfly’

Trudi Beswick, CEO of Caudwell Children, describes the meticulous thought that has gone into the design and construction of the new Caudwell International Children’s Centre.

Toronto facility ‘integrates with urban fabric’

The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto was the subject of a presentation, ‘You’ve Changed’, at May’s Design in Mental Health 2018 conference.

Expert care for mothers facing mental ill health

Exeter-based Grainge Architects was last summer appointed to design one of four new Mother & Baby Units commissioned by the NHS in England to allow women needing mental healthcare to stay with their babies while receiving the care they need.

Working toward unified product testing

Philip Ross, a DIMHN Board member who leads the Network’s Testing & Innovation stream, reports on the ongoing joint work by the DIMHN and the Building Research Establishment (BRE) to develop and launch product testing standards for some of the key products used in mental healthcare settings.

A wide-ranging look at the priorities and goals

Giving a keynote speech at Design in Mental Health 2018, NHS England’s national clinical director for Mental Health reported on progress made, and goals yet to be met, on mental health provision in England in line with the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health.

Workstreams’ activities and aims set out in detail

In an opening session at May’s DIMH 2018 conference, leads and members of the DIMHN workstreams outlined the goals of their workstream, and some of the ambitious and potentially far-reaching activities that each is undertaking.

Creativity and innovation in six areas showcased

This year’s Design in Mental Health Awards celebrated excellence in six categories, and saw an impassioned after-dinner speech by Dr Jacqui Dillon, an activist, writer, and speaker, who suffered childhood abuse, and now lectures worldwide on trauma, abuse, psychosis, dissociation, and healing.

Ameticulous approach to maintaining safety

Ensuring that staff using staff attack alarms are well trained, urging mental healthcare providers to better communicate with each other, and encouraging strengthening of guidance and standards.

Helping to make ‘zero suicide’ a feasible goal

Director of award-winning design and manufacturing company Safehinge Primera, Philip Ross, discusses Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, and Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust’s goals for a ‘zero suicide rate’ in mental health facilities, and ‘how the role of the built environment and staff training can be part of the solution’.

SLAM’s security challenge metvia ‘proven system’

As the provider of the widest range of NHS mental health services in the UK, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust takes the safety of staff and patients very seriously.

Design interventions must truly aid recovery

A key theme at next month’s Design in Mental Health 2018 event will be the need for more clinical evidence that ‘interventions’ that impact patient space actually aid recovery.

A new chapter for charity founded by Anna Freud

A mental healthcare charity first established almost 70 years ago by Anna Freud is soon to re-locate from various ageing residential properties to a new purpose-built facility.

Customer feedback the starting point

Safehinge Primera says it worked with architects, clinicians, facilities managers, infection control leads, and other key stakeholders, for 18 months to develop its award-winning Safehinge Symphony en-suite door.

Carpeting affords many therapeutic benefits

Catherine Helliker, marketing manager at danfloor UK, a specialist manufacturer and supplier of commercial carpet, explains how danfloor helps architects and designers create spaces which are not only fit for purpose aesthetically and practically for service-users, patients, and staff, but are also able to withstand demanding use.

Turning cameras into health monitors

Oxehealth claims to be the world’s first company to offer technology that enables clinicians and carers to monitor human activity and vital signs ‘totally contact-free’ using only mass-produced optical sensors.

Thinking differently and valuing feedback

The design manager at specialist in electronic water efficiency controls, Dart Valley Systems, describes its approach to manufacturing for mental healthcare and other ‘secure’ applications.

£10 million autism unit to ‘transform’ patient care

A director at Medical Architecture discusses the imagination, thought, and collaboration that went into the design of a new adult autism inpatient unit at Morpeth’s Northgate Hospital, reportedly the UK’s first building specifically created for this service-user group.

Supporting ‘smarter ways of thinking’

Kent-headquartered Kingsway Group – a DIMHN member which designs and manufactures high quality doorsets, vision panels, and anti-ligature hardware – says it is in business ‘to push limits, challenge thinking, invest, and do what it takes to move safety and design in mental health environments to the next level’. The Network’s editor, Jonathan Baillie, visited the company’s headquarters to find out more about this fast-growing, forward-thinking business from sales director, Julian Hall.

Flexible accommodation to help speed recovery

A new inpatient mental healthcare building at Fieldhead Hospital in Wakefield which welcomed its first patients last month provides comfortable, flexible, and therapeutic accommodation for adult acute and older service-users to help speed recovery and a return to ‘normal life’. Replacing older, outdated villa-style accommodation, the £16.8 million Unity Centre will, on the completion of all the facilities next year, incorporate separate adult acute male and female wards, an older people’s ward, a psychiatric intensive care unit (PICU), and high quality activity, leisure, eating, and outdoor spaces, including a third lounge where patients of both sexes can mix and socialise. As The Network’s editor, Jonathan Baillie, discovered from the project team, the development is the biggest seen on the site for over a decade.

Guidance to help create ‘uplifting spaces’

Speaking at May’s Design in Mental Health 2017 conference at the National Motorcycle Museum in Solihull, DIMHN chair, Jenny Gill, associate director at Medical Architecture, Lianne Knotts, and director of Technical Publishing Services, Sue Holding, explained how they had worked closely together over the past year to produce a new Health Building Note, HBN 03-02, recently published, which provides guidance on the effective and age-appropriate design and construction of CAMHS facilities. The Network’s editor, Jonathan Baillie, reports.

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