Design interventions must truly aid recovery

A key theme at the Design in Mental Health 2018 conference – the annual DIMH conference, exhibition, awards, and dinner will again take place at the National Conference Centre in Solihull, from 15-16 May – will be the need for more clinical evidence that ‘interventions’ that impact the patient space actually aid recovery. There will also be an emphasis on projects that focused on personal, aesthetic, sonic, therapeutic, and natural space, with the speakers explaining the thinking behind them, and the resulting service-user and staff benefits.

One of the key members of the team behind this year’s Design in Mental Health Network conference is Jeff Bartle, a highly experienced estates and facilities professional who, in his last full-time role before taking ‘semi-retirement’ last year, spent 15 years in senior estate management roles with mental healthcare charity, St Andrew’s Healthcare. A member of the DIMHN Board, he is now a consultant to the mental health sector. He said of this year’s programme: “One of the main objectives in putting together the 2018 conference was to follow on from last year’s Design with People in Mindpublication, authored by the leader of the DIMHN’s Research stream, Paula Reavey, Professor of Psychology at London Southbank University, and launched at last year’s conference. Our goal has been to pick up on some of the key themes of that report, with the emphasis on putting more clinical research findings behind how we design mental health spaces. The sessions this year reflecting on Design with People in Mindwill thus cover personal space, sonic space, aesthetic space, therapeutic space, and natural space.” 

‘TRAWL ’ OF EXISTING DOCUMENTS