Sui McDermott Harris 2023

This study was conducted at Kaiser Permanente San Jose in Northern California, a large community health center serving a broad population encompassing diverse socioeconomic and racial/ethnic groups, within the department of Adult Psychiatry. Clinic leaders supported a design-oriented effort to investigate patient perspectives on physical environments in their mental health recovery.

This study was conducted at a large facility within the Department of Adult Psychiatry in the USA that serves a large, diverse population. Clinic leaders supported the study examining the relationship between physical environments and mental health recovery.

Here, we sought to conduct a rigorous, in-depth exploration of patient perspectives of physical environments, both within and external to the outpatient clinic setting, on their mental health recovery. We sought to identify themes that can meaningfully augment HCD or other applied design approaches, and we aimed to describe the different ways that physical environments can impact the mental health recovery of patients receiving care from an urban psychiatric clinic.

Researchers aimed to conduct a deep dive into patients’ outlook on the relationship between their physical environments and their mental health recovery. They aimed to identify and describe common themes in patients’ recovery related to their physical environments that had a meaningful impact on their mental health recovery.

We found four dimensions of physical environments that participants identified as significant to their mental well-being and recovery: 1) sensory design elements, 2) engagement intensity 3) social relational aspects and 4) the affective experiences evoked by being present in the space itself (summarized in Fig 2).

The study found four common themes that related to the paticants mental health recovery:

1. Sensory Designs (including colour, sounds, and textures)
2. Engagement Intensity (interactive and welcoming to personalize in some way)
3. Social relational aspects (a comfortable amount of physical space between others)
4. The overall experience of how the environment made them feel.

This study identified several key themes regarding the physical environment that participants found to be impactful in mental health recovery–sensory design elements, engagement intensity, social relational aspects, and affective experiences. Although our findings inform design elements that can be useful building blocks for HCD-based approaches to the construction of healing spaces, we note that the four dimensions of environmental impact can also support patients and clinicians seeking to harness potential benefits of physical environments encountered in daily living–in other words, a design-oriented approach to a patient’s mental health journey. 

This study found a handful of common themes in their physical environments that participants linked to being helpful for their mental health recovery. Even though this study was conducted in a clinic setting, these results can also help patients change their at-home living environments to align with their recovery.

Because the study primarily used females and English speakers, future research could expand its participant pool. Including testing females versus males preferences, or native speaking English participants versus other languages preferences, and common themes related to the relationship of physical environment and mental health recovery.

I did not find the paper too difficult; the only thing I found confusing was the titles of the categories they found as common themes for participants, such as Engagement Intensity. Honestly, I found this article very interesting as a volunteer at the new Burnaby Hospital. I was recently wondering whether our new hospital will affect patients’ recovery, so this was very cool to read.