FEATURE ARTICLES

Former WBC World Heavyweight Boxing Champion, Frank Bruno MBE – well-known since his retirement from the sport both for his charity work, and for his efforts to destigmatise mental health following his own diagnosis of bipolar disorder in 2003 – was the after-dinner speaker and award presenter at this year’s Design in Mental Health Awards. Held on 17 May – the first day of the 2016 Design in Mental Health conference and exhibition – the awards dinner saw over 250 guests gather at the National Conference Centre in Solihull to celebrate achievement in categories ranging from Project of the Year to Healthy Outdoor Lifestyle.

Steven Hunt describes his company’s specialist design and provision of a comprehensive ‘package’ of building engineering services for a new CAMHS inpatient in Chester.

Jane Willis, director of Bristol-based Willis Newson, explains how the arts and health consultancy engaged service-users in decision-making around the art, interiors, colours, and furniture, for a new £60 million mental health building for the Medium Secure Unit at St Bernard’s Hospital in Ealing.

Peter Stead and Cath Lake of P+HS Architects explain how, working with Sheffield Health and Social Care NHS Foundation Trust, they designed a new Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) within the existing Longley Centre at Sheffield’s Northern General Hospital. As they explain, the decision to relocate the unit to the front of the centre, within the former CAMHS unit, provided ‘both opportunities and constraints’.

PM Devereux Architects has recently completed the design and procurement of a new 60-bed adult acute mental health facility for the Surrey and Borders Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (SABPT) at its existing site in Farnham Road, Guildford. As senior healthcare director, Mark Carter, reports, a key element of the brief was to provide a service that de-stigmatises those suffering from a mental health illness.

Jerry Smith, director of Primera Life, a UK company focused solely on the design and manufacture of anti-ligature door and window hardware, gives a personal viewpoint on some of the specific challenges in the process of mental health care specification. The company’s products are designed and produced in the UK, and used ‘in some of the most challenging healthcare environments’.

Garden designers, Debbie Carroll and Mark Rendell, from Step Change Design, carried out a research project in the care sector to answer a simple question, ‘Why aren’t care home gardens used more actively?’ As they explain, the answers found had little to do with the design of the outside spaces, and more to do with the complex phenomenon of care culture.

Re-writing the book on mental health services can lead to new, exciting, and transformational ideas. However, as architect, Andrew Street, studio associate at IBI Group, explains, given the opportunity to reinvent one’s mental health strategy and develop a brand new home for one’s services, while faced with the geographical and demographical challenges of being based on a small island – in this case Guernsey – the rewards can be even greater.

Whether you are looking at adding new buildings, considering refurbishing existing facilities, or thinking about ongoing maintenance or improvement work, the Design in Mental Health 2016 event, taking place from 17-18 May at the National Conference Centre, Solihull (formerly known as the National Motorcycle Museum), should provide an excellent forum for information, solutions, and ideas.

Dan Savage, a visual artist and designer who specialises in creating integral artwork for healthcare environments, puts a powerful case for art’s therapeutic benefits in mental healthcare environments, and explains how to select artworks that calm, relax, and positively engage service-users. Over the past 10 years he has delivered 24 art schemes for NHS Trusts and hospices, and a further 11 public art schemes for local authorities, educational establishments, and commercial clients.

Seven years have elapsed since members of the Design In Mental Health Network first discussed designing and building a ‘mock-up’ mental healthcare inpatient bedroom to enable evaluation of the latest products and technologies targeted at such environments in a realistic setting. Here, DIMHN chair, Jenny Gill, looks back at the considerable progress in developing the Better Bedroom, and explains the latest plans to now focus on other inpatient environments where improvements are due.

Karen Flatt, an architect at IBI Group, and specialist in mental health design, and IBI interior designer, Lynn Lindley, discuss the creation of a ‘Dementia-Friendly Care Zone’ at Croydon University Hospital, which not only raised the profile of dementia within the south London healthcare facility, but which nursing staff say is ‘a much better environment to work in – being positive, calming, and beneficial to patients’.

Phil Padgett, national sales manager and dementia specialist at medical equipment and services provider, Essential Healthcare Solutions, argues that staff looking after those living with dementia need both appropriate training and a proper understanding of the condition. He also sets out some of the basic interior design criteria to consider when fitting out and furnishing facilities to be ‘dementia-friendly’.

Barbara Miszkiel, a principal in the Toronto office of Stantec Architecture, in charge of Behavioural Health, Long-Term Care, and other Specialty Healthcare projects, describes how the involvement of key stakeholders including staff, young service-users, their families, the local community, consultants, and contractors, in a clear ‘visioning’ process, proved key to achieving a successful transformation and ‘rejuvenation’ of the facilities at the Lutherwood Children’s Mental Health Centre in Ontario, Canada.

Chris Shaw, founding director of or architectural practice and health planning consultancy, Medical Architecture, describes the background to the development of Mersey Care NHS Trust’s new £25m Clock View Hospital, which opened in February on the site of the former Walton Hospital on Merseyside. The 80-bed inpatient unit provides short-term treatment for mental health issues including depression, anxiety, and dementia, houses Liverpool’s new psychiatric intensive care unit, and is the base for a new local assessment and immediate care service.

An interesting insight into the impact on service-users of really high quality mental healthcare accommodation, and some of the key characteristics of buildings, clinical practice, and service models, that optimise, or indeed hamper, the chances of a speedy recovery, were examined in the opening keynote on Day Two at the Design in Mental Health 2015 conference, by Professor Fiona Mason, chief medical officer at St Andrew’s Healthcare. Jonathan Baillie reports.

Few beds, one would imagine, could withstand three-quarters of a ton landing on them, but this was the challenge successfully met by a box bed from a furniture manufacturer for challenging behaviour environments, Tough Furniture, when, to reassure a customer that the bed could accommodate 30-stone patients, 13 of the company’s staff jumped repeatedly on it to ensure that it would survive intact in a real-world setting. Such testing may seem extreme, but is vital, since much of the company’s furniture is destined for environments where patients will abuse, and indeed attempt to destroy, components.

In 2016 all centrally-procured Government construction projects will have to use fully-collaborative 3D Building Information Modelling (BIM). With only months to go until this deadline, the pressure is on healthcare suppliers to make their product ranges compliant. In this article, Philip Ross, director of Safehinge, explains what this means for the marketplace and ‘why you should not be afraid to embrace BIM’.

A personal standpoint on ‘how not to design a perfect mental hospital or clinic’, from a writer and mental health campaigner who formerly ran a large mental health Trust, and is also a service-user, formed the second first-day keynote presentation at May’s Design in Mental Health 2015 conference. Lisa Rodrigues’ address focused on the positive impact that a high quality inpatient environment can have on recovery and care, and highlighted some of the elements that can have the opposite effect. The Network editor, Jonathan Baillie, reports.

In the second of two opening keynote speeches at Day Two of May’s Design in Mental Health conference in Solihull, Ian Callaghan, a long-standing user of mental health services, who is today the national service-user lead for My Shared Pathway and Recovery and Outcomes in secure mental healthcare, gave the perspective of a service-user, and now also a regular visitor to inpatient mental healthcare facilities in a professional role, on ‘best practice in design, with recovery in mind’.