Construction has begun on a steel net to prevent people from jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge, after years of debate over whether such an obstacle would mar the bridge’s romantic image.

For at least the next two years, crews will toil throughout the night to build a coarse web of marine cable beneath the Art Deco span that is both an international symbol for engineering beauty and a magnet for suicides. — San Francisco Chronicle

When the Government Hospital for the Insane opened in Anacostia in 1855, the asylum’s supervising physician, Charles Nichols, predicted that 50 percent of the mentally ill people treated there would make a full recovery. What made him so confident? The building. He’d designed it in accordance with the most cutting-edge theories of the day, which called for sunny, well-ventilated asylums in the countryside — the Washington Post

It’s an issue that oscillates according to many factors, mainly debt, but also the competitiveness of and between students and likewise of and between staff. We monitor it very carefully and are continuously seeking to improve our approach, extend support, and address the culture that surrounds the issue. We welcome this discussion which also needs to spotlight overworking, a culture of competition and production that is too intense, and an unhealthy disregard for rest and repose. — Bob Sheil – bdonline.co.uk

“Genetics, early experiences, family relationships and social settings can’t be addressed through urban design,” McCay explains. “But urban design can and should play a role, just as it does for physical disorders, which have equally complex causes.” [...]

But experts believe guidelines for healthy urban environments are currently failing to take this growing awareness into consideration. [...]

“understanding of these issues is not yet mainstream” in the architectural community. — theguardian.com

Nearly 90% of the 447 respondents said they had had to work through the night at some point. Almost one-third said they have to do it regularly. Two-thirds of undergraduates said their debt at the end of their course would be £30,000 or above. Despite that, almost a third said they had been asked to work in practice for free...

[One student respondent] said: “A culture of suffering for your art is promoted within education.” — The Guardian

[James] Leadbitter called it “a playful and exciting space for redesigning madness, a utopian attempt at what a mental health hospital could be like.”

Each structure...is an abstract interpretation of the feedback from the workshops, designed to offer varying levels “of privacy and intimacy ranging from total isolation to complete togetherness.”

“This is only a small glimpse of a project that has huge potential to influence the way we think about the design of mental health care environments,” — Slate

The link between psychosis and city living was first noticed by American psychiatrists in the early 1900s who found that asylum patients were more likely to come from built-up areas. This association was sporadically rediscovered throughout the following century until researchers verified the association from the 1990s onwards with systematic and statistically controlled studies that tested people in the community as well as in clinics. — The Atlantic

In 1980, for instance, fewer than 12 percent of American workers commuted for 45 minutes or more one way, according to the Census.

The Census didn't even bother separating out 60- and 90-minute commuters in 1980, since it was relatively rare. But they began tracking these mega-commuters in 1990. That year, 1.6 percent of workers commuted 90 minutes or more one way. In 2014, 2.62 percent of workers were commuting this long, an increase of 64 percent over the prevalence in 1990. — Washington Post

The Centre for Urban Design and Mental Health is planning to launch a new, biannual journal in early 2016.

This online journal will help address the challenge of there not being many journals explicitly publishing research on the links between urban design and mental health right now. [...]

Do you have a relevant research paper, case study, review, comment piece, photograph, book review or other relevant content, (or a good suggestion for the journal's name)? If yes, please submit — urbandesignmentalhealth.com

Rural adolescents commit suicide at roughly twice the rate of their urban peers, according to a study published in the May issue of the journal JAMA Pediatrics. Although imbalances between city and country have long persisted, “we weren’t expecting that the disparities would be increasing over time,” said the study’s lead author, Cynthia Fontanella, a psychologist at Ohio State University.

“The rates are higher, and the gap is getting wider.” — the New York Times

boring environments can generate stress, impulsivity, lowered levels of positive affect, and risky behaviour. [...]

based on well-understood principles of neuroplasticity and on what is known of the effects of deprivation and enrichment in other more extreme settings ... there is every reason to believe that these sterile, homogeneous environments are exerting a measurable effect on our behaviour [...]

Given this, the prudent design of city streets and buildings is a matter of public health. — aeon.co

With the huge impact of mental disorders on people’s health and wellbeing, and the increased mental health risk of that comes simply from living in a city, you might think that mental health would be an urban health priority. In fact, few policies or recommendations for healthy urban environments address mental health in any depth. — CityMetric