Designing better mental healthcare facilities

Good domestic design boosts wellbeing

Richard Mazuch, an architect and designer, and the director of Design Research and Innovation at IBI Group, looks at some of the effects of different domestic environments, designs, and characteristics, on mental health.

Drawing on research, he emphasises the profound impact that a well-designed home can have on residents’ mental wellbeing, positivity, mood, sleep, and the ability to meet life’s ‘ups and downs’ resiliently, and highlights some of the key elements to consider in a sympathetic design

Unusually and inexplicably, mental health is seldom addressed in the design of the home (Fig 1). It can be a ‘Sanctuary’, as well as a ‘Hades’ – a place of major stress. Research informs us that it is here that most mental health issues are incubated and germinate, especially from early childhood, and go on to be established by adolescence. However, when assessing the broader picture, emotional health issues inhabit all stages of our lives – from childhood to adolescence, family life to parenting, working lives to relationships, and finally to issues related to a rapidly increasing elderly population. Such issues include ‘cabin fever’, loneliness, poor self-worth/esteem, post/prenatal depression, personal spaces, isolation, OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), CFS (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome), ‘walkabout’, boundaries, raging adolescent hormones, ‘sundowning’, sleep deprivation, eating disorders, bipolar depression, dementia, bereavement, hypo/hyper sense sensitivities, and ‘post-op’ recovery/ rehabilitation. 

An issue for ‘one in four’

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