Abstract
This paper focuses on places of healing for co-diagnosed patients who suffer from both mental and medical illnesses. Comorbidity is recognized as a growing concern yet there is little prece-dent in the healthcare industry for designing spaces that respond to needs of patients who re-quire hospitalization for medical conditions, and who simultaneously suffer mental health disor-ders. To explore this problem, we created a workshop to engage healthcare providers, adminis-trators and healthcare architects with undergraduate and graduate students in art, architecture, visual communications and urban design. Our goal was to identify issues that must be ad-dressed through the lens of patients and providers, and to generate design concepts for this largely unprecedented space type. Lived experiences of doctors, nurses and healthcare designers were central to guiding the design investigation. Insights from the workshop create pathways for future research and industry application that prioritize cultures of care for co-diagnosed pa-tients and caregivers.
Keywords
mental health; inpatient care; comorbidity; design research
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2024.471
Citation
Greer, V., Johnson, E., Pankey, V., and Burton, J. (2024) Co-diagnosed: A multi-disciplinary workshop reimagining cultures of care for medical and mental health, in Gray, C., Ciliotta Chehade, E., Hekkert, P., Forlano, L., Ciuccarelli, P., Lloyd, P. (eds.), DRS2024: Boston, 23–28 June, Boston, USA. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2024.471
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Conference Track
Research Paper
Included in
Co-diagnosed: A multi-disciplinary workshop reimagining cultures of care for medical and mental health
This paper focuses on places of healing for co-diagnosed patients who suffer from both mental and medical illnesses. Comorbidity is recognized as a growing concern yet there is little prece-dent in the healthcare industry for designing spaces that respond to needs of patients who re-quire hospitalization for medical conditions, and who simultaneously suffer mental health disor-ders. To explore this problem, we created a workshop to engage healthcare providers, adminis-trators and healthcare architects with undergraduate and graduate students in art, architecture, visual communications and urban design. Our goal was to identify issues that must be ad-dressed through the lens of patients and providers, and to generate design concepts for this largely unprecedented space type. Lived experiences of doctors, nurses and healthcare designers were central to guiding the design investigation. Insights from the workshop create pathways for future research and industry application that prioritize cultures of care for co-diagnosed pa-tients and caregivers.