Skills building seminar: Design for mental health integration through built environment interventions

Mental illness is associated with social exclusion and stigma more than most other health issues. This affects psychiatric facility provision (Chrysikou et al 2017), prevention and early treatment interventions. The planning and design of services both conceptually (service procedures, experience designs, campaigns and physically (e.g. buildings, products, interiors) could help change that. New approaches could build resilience by increasing access to and acceptance of mental health services and enable recovery as a constant process (Slade et al 2008). This intense skill- building workshop will use a role-game approach with cross-disciplinary methods from experience design and design thinking to foster innovative spatial concepts in a co-creative manner. This helps to build capacity and knowledge on exploring and developing innovative and disruptive concepts for public urban mental health. Focus is on spatial configuration, architectural and design aspects for services and mental health systems. The highly interactive seminar-workshop starts with two 5' presentations to set the theoretical multi-disciplinary stage. A third 5' presentation addresses issues addressed to the participants and presents the locus of the role play, i.e. Crete, chosen for its unique socio-spatial and systemic characteristics. A 5' presentation explains the scenario and stakeholder roles. The group session comprises a 50' long structured series of ideation and analysis methods based on a role-play-like schedule in which delegates act as service provider for a municipal client (Crete) that request an innovative mental health care solution for a specific urban context. Then 10' will be the closing session on the process by mapping the reflections of the process on a collective SWOT diagram.