Is Your Environment Negatively Affecting Your Mental Health?
If we are truly taking mental health seriously, then we should be committed to identifying and addressing all root causes of mental health issues⎯including the impact of poorly designed environments.
Poorly designed environments may worsen mental health by:
“If we talk about mental health, we also need to talk about the importance of wellbeing design and the negative impact of poorly designed spaces and places.”
So, what can we do about it?
Instead, we can use a human-centered and community-centered approach and design built environments with wellbeing in mind. These spaces contribute to positive mental health by:
Ultimately, built environments can be both healing and transformative but only if they are designed to be. Therefore, tackling the mental health crisis requires actively assessing our environments and optimizing them for health and wellbeing of all populations.