Examination of How the Design Quality of Psychiatric Treatment Centers Foster Mental Health Recovery

Abstract

Mental Health is caused by many different factors, poverty being one of them. Uganda is a low-income country according to the World Bank’s Global Income Densification suffering from challenges of poverty and disease. With the prevailing statistics of Ugandans suffering from mental ill-health and the lurking need to incorporate it into primary health care, (Kigozi et al, 2010) there is a need to focus on the design of Psychiatric health facilities to alleviate this poor state. These factors combined with the Covid-19 state-wide lockdown of 2020 and 2021, mental Health cases were seen to sky-rocket due to various effects including frustration from design of living spaces. To overcome these problems, this research aims to broaden the existing understanding of mental health and how architectural design, directly and indirectly, influences the treatment process within psychiatric centers, for recovery of people that suffer from mental ill-health then suggest to designers on ways of creating therapeutic spaces for these centers and those that we live in. Over a total period of 12 weeks in which the research was carried out, the examination involved the process of studying former literature on the various concepts developed in the conceptual framework on the similar subject. From this point the researcher compares this data with field findings that are collected through a qualitative approach by interviewing selected individuals, observing and sketching from a similar psychiatric center, studying documents on the subject and finally by taking photographs in the center. Analysis of this data was strategically done under the concepts; spatial usage, spatial quality and therapeutic milieu of space use, so as to draw conclusions and generate recommendations. The study confirmed that design of space within psychiatric treatment centers does have an effect on the treatment process and the understanding of this fact varies from psychiatrists, care givers, and the individuals suffering from mental ill-health themselves. The recommendations made can shape the relationship of space and mental health recovery in the face of the future for designers, psychiatrists and all stakeholders when fully utilized.