MORE THAN BRICKS AND MORTAR

By Jo Henwood

Catherine Mills uses her experiences as a mental health service user to share her vision of how hospitals and other therapeutic buildings should look and feel.

When a hospital development is first proposed at Mersey Care, top of the Trust’s agenda is to listen to the people who will spend time in that space – service users, carers, visitors and staff, as well as the local community.

For mental health service user Catherine Mills light was a non negotiable need. Her own recollection of being in hospital was ‘a dark, grim, sparce room that felt like a prison cell’. “I was ‘lucky’ she says. “I had my own room –but all it had was a bed and a sink and it had bars on the window. My biggest distress was knowing it would upset my parents when they visited me.”

When Clock View, the first of a new generation of mental health hospitals was being designed almost two decades ago, previous Trust chairman Beatrice Fraenkel was passionate that service users should be directly involved.

Catherine would sit on design panels, consult architect’s drawings and building plans and tour the site as the vision became reality.

That vision was to design a place that is therapeutic, where the building itself helps someone recover more quickly and not have to stay so long.

Today each inpatient has their own light airy bedroom with a display cabinet to personalise with their own artwork, family photographs or decorations at special times of the year. Each ward has its own accessible garden.

Catherine, now Mersey Care’s Mental Health Care Division service user and carer lead, says: “There is so much light, through generous windows or rooflights, which gives such a sense of space. You don’t feel oppressed, the building values everyone who stays there, works there or visits. It was a privilege to play a small part in helping create this environment.”

Clock View Hospital exemplified the approach and has since won many accolades. It has been followed by Rowan View medium secure unit in Maghull, where bedrooms and therapy suites are all built around a social hub; Hartley Hospital acute unit in Southport and a new state of the art mental health hospital in Mossley Hill, South Liverpool, due to open in 2024. Also opening soon at Maghull Health Park, is Aspen Wood low secure unit. All follow the blueprint of being buildings with people at their hearts.

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Director of social health and community inclusion Michael Crilly says: “It’s about the way you walk through a space and lines of sight, to hygiene, the quality of the furniture and artwork on the walls. We want to make the space work for the people who will use it, people with lived experience of our services.”

Architect and service user volunteer Robert MacDonald feels that listening to people like him helped architects appreciate what it’s like to be an inpatient in a mental health hospital.

“They understood from us that staying in a mental health hospital can be a frightening experience. Being observed and trying to sleep in unfamiliar rooms can feel uncomfortable.”

Rob used to run art classes at Mersey Care’s Life Rooms. He values how art and horticulture have been threaded into building design. “There’s so much natural wood and warm colours. Sculpture and art are integrated into the design. Bedrooms have window seats with garden views. The caring environment is valued – it feels optimistic.”

Volunteer Jeanette Murray is very excited that the new Mossley Hill hospital will have plenty of outdoor space. She has been nationally recognised for using her own experience of mental ill health to help the Trust develop ways to reduce the need for physical restraint when someone is in mental distress.

“I can’t wait to see the building finished. Imagine the outdoor greenery for the patients to just sit and chill – it’s so important,” says Jeanette.

Off the shelf artwork? Think again says recently retired arts coordinator Berenice Gibson. Before a hospital is even built, service users, carers and the local community are invited to work on large scale creations.

“This is not about heading to IKEA to buy something to go on the walls. We invite service users and the local community to work with professional artists on say a sculpture, stained glass windows, wall art, photography or poetry.”

A stained glass window in the sanctuary at Clock View was inspired by ideas born in a workshop by patients at Ashworth high secure hospital. Cyanotype images are used throughout Clock View, made using vegetables grown by an allotment group.

Views onto Hartley Hospital courtyard garden (above and below).

Art is part of the therapeutic nature of building.

Senior Clinical Nurse Noirin Smith (below and right) sums up the importance of this collaborative approach to new buildings.

“It’s not always about the fanciest things, often it’s about having somewhere quiet and private, knowing that your belongings are at hand or being able to step outside your room into the sunshine.”