Origins in academic and healthcare collaboration

In a follow-up to the interview in January’s The Network with former Chair, Jenny Gill, in which she looked back at some of the DiMHN’s early history, President, Joe Forster, recalls the organisation’s earliest days, and explains how its origins lie in shifts in thinking early in the new Millennium about the sort of environments that architects, designers, and product suppliers, and the healthcare providers looking after service-users, believed were needed to provide effective 21st-century mental healthcare.

The origins of DiMHN lie in academic and healthcare collaboration, based around the ideals of co-production. Various schemes were being set up to support the engagement of marginalised people in the early 2000s. There was a growing survivor voice in the field of mental health provision, and social enterprise approaches were explored to develop solutions for societal problems. Ann Whitworth (formerly Alty) was Health Projects research co-ordinator in the School of Design at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLAN). During a career in mental health nursing, specialising in acute care, Dr Whitworth researched the impact of experiencing seclusion, and the involvement of service-users in their own care. This led to an interest in improving the environments of care. Her colleague, Bev Lamey, Principal lecturer in design, was collaborating with Carol Bristow, Project manager at Morecambe Bay Primary Care Trust, working with staff and service-users on the Supportive Environment Encouraging Development (SEED) project. Bev Lamey has worked with a number of user groups seeking a voice in society, to establish methods that empower and encourage participation and inclusion. She believes that design can change not only the physical environment, but can also influence organisational structures, and the way that people think, feel, and act. An early design output from SEED, which had immediate impact with low cost and minimum fuss, was a ‘crumple-able’ vase, which enabled people in secure care to have fresh cut flowers in their rooms.

A move away from an institutional asylum model