“Designing a Healing Mental Health Campus to create an Accessible Continuum of Compassionate Care”

Presented at the European Healthcare Congress in London, UK

Historically patients with long term mental illness have been warehoused away from the local population. Driven by stigma, lack of understanding, and marginalized resources, citizens with mental health concerns were often isolated further in facilities separated from the community. Access to care is often limited, and the continuum of care has been disjointed. It can take 5 years for a patient to reach to find their place as a functioning member of society, managed and stabilized. How does this fit into a system that focuses on short-term solutions, or otherwise long-term isolation?

Carrier Clinic has been a pioneer in overcoming this dilemma. From a farm based, grass roots initiative, Carrier has developed a truly unique healing campus. Combining patient-designed care in unison with community based initiatives, and integrated leadership has resulted in the construction of a system of compassionate care that is helping to break-through this stigma, and is designing a continuum of accessible compassionate care into the community, and beyond.

Compassion for humanity with alternative solutions and evidence-based best practices is the premise of the proposed solution to stigma and isolation.

The creative intelligence of design can transform and improve the physical and mental environments in behavioral health. 

By working in collaboration with service providers and users, we can design for better outcomes that can reach from an individual sense of dignity to the greater whole, a pebble in the pond, from individual to a global reach.

The presentation at the European Healthcare Congress showed how the physical environment can improve the world of behavioral health, both perceived and physical, and demonstrated how facilities once defined by a stone wall with a locked gate to an asylum are changing beyond recognition, as we design dignified environments and reach out to the community to develop awareness and help eliminate stigma.

Integrating the following fundamentals have been critical to improving behavioral health outcomes:

• Establish Models of Dignified Care
• Design for Wellness and Well-being
• Educate the Community
• Be a Good Neighbor
• Utilize Evidence Based Best Practices as proven by research and evidence to provide the best state of the art care, including science and technology focused innovations.
• Provide Alternative Amenities

INDIVIDUAL + COMMUNITY: Healing Mental Health Campus

Carrier Clinic, a strong force in the community has received a good neighbor award, which turns the table on NIMBY. At Carrier Clinic, individuals receive a special kind of care: one that unites alternative, innovative, integrative and sustainable practices.

Blurring the boundaries of inside and outside, smart architecture and master planning integrate evidence based practices with Alternative Artist integration and alternative therapies, and between the boundaries of campus and farm, where animals, horses, guinea hens, goats and most of all, peacocks are part of the therapy modalities used for their 1000 +/- patients. Carrier Clinic, with over 100 years of providing services to those suffering mental illness, is a safe haven, healing campus, and go to place for individuals with all levels of mental health concerns, from acute to addictions, to find healing, healing that is tied into a greater system. 

STATE + BEYOND: Accessible Continuum of Compassionate Care

Creating a system of compassionate care means developing a continuum of care that follows the individual into the community and beyond. When we can reach a place where there is both local and global understanding of the importance of mental health being designed into life, well-being improves for all. To achieve this it is necessary to provide actual, tangible solutions in the built environment. The HMH Carrier mission is to create this continuum of care that goes everywhere where anyone with mental health concerns might exist in the world. That accessible care is everywhere, and that it is clear, integrated and sustainable to all concerned.

Conclusions and implications
In a world in which mental illness is still greatly stigmatized, and where many are still struggling to find solutions to the issues impacting behavioral health, addiction and well-being, architecture and design solutions can help to achieve better outcomes.

MORE:

Salus: European Healthcare Design Congress Programme
Princeton Online:PrincetonWellbeing.com - Press Release

“Blurring the boundaries: Designing place-based health systems"

About The European Healthcare Design Congress
European Healthcare Design adopts a whole-system approach to redesigning international health systems, services, and infrastructure through the exchange of knowledge, research and best practice. It will help tackle social isolation, providing cognitive stimulation, reducing stress, and supporting rehabilitation. We can use the fusion of art and digital technology in the real and virtual worlds to improve outcomes and enhance staff and patient experience.

About Hackensack Meridian Health Carrier Clinic
Hackensack Meridian Health Carrier Clinic, a private, nonprofit behavioral health care provider, specializes in psychiatric and addiction treatment. Hackensack Meridian Health Carrier Clinic includes an inpatient psychiatric hospital, detoxification and rehabilitation center, adolescent residential facility, and a fully accredited mental health middle and high school for students.