ABSTRACT

PART 1

ABSTRACT

Hospitals or healthcare facilities have always been a large part of my life while growing up as I come from a family with a medicine background. Since I spent a lot of time in these facilities, on the basis of my personal observations various questions started arising in my mind such as,

Why do we always experience anxiety while we are awaited in the hospital lobby? Why do all hospitals seem similar with the pain walls, medical odor and suffocating atmosphere almost creating a negative or uncomfortable ambience?

While researching about this I came across an approach defying the odds in the healthcare sector with an approach termed as “Holistic Healthcare”. The word “holistic” means relating to the idea that things should be studied as a whole and not just as a sum of their parts. “Health is a state of complete harmony of the body, mind and spirit. When one is free from physical disabilities and mental distractions, the gates of the soul open.” – B.K.S. Iyengar.

Figure 2: Plain light coloured walls Figure 1:Enclosed waiting lobbies Figure 3:Congested wards with medical odor

Whenever we experience the ambience of a new place, it has some influence over us consciously or sub-consciously. This is where the 4 senses of sight, touch, smell and sound of our body play a part in determining the aura of the place. If the image created by our mind is pleasant we get a serene feeling of comfort whereas on the other hand if the vision of the place is bleak we associate it with insecurity or uneasiness. Such places with negative mental impacts can cause distress and fear which can be mind-draining.

In holistic healthcare, the focus is on a patient’s overall health with consideration of the surrounding, rather than just the treatment of a specific disease. This holistic approach has been implemented in our Indian culture since decades through Ayurveda. But somehow with modernization we have failed to preserve some of the necessary or beneficial aspects of mental health in the new healthcare facilities. The physical environment contributes immense help in self-healing process of an individual. With time, patients started being seen as objects and not the main focus of the design. The environmental qualities that could be considered as psychosocially supported have not been explored.

If the spaces in the healthcare facilities are designed in order to humanize the areas for the patients, the psychological impact caused on the patients will give them a sense of relief and ease and make the ambience around a lot more peaceful. By using architectural elements or strategies the human senses can be stimulated in the created environment. Proper special planning methods, use of natural materials, and proper lighting methods - natural and artificial, planting certain plants in the landscape are few of the strategies that can be used to convert a stressful space into a calming and soothing place.

The holistic needs of patients in the healthcare sector is in every field of medicine but some of the user groups or patients suffering from specific chronic diseases have tremendous psychological needs which also affect their treatment process. As the healthcare sector is very vast it was important for the purpose of this thesis to narrow down to a specific specialized facility or user group which has large holistic needs but seem to be ignored in India specifically.

Asking the question, The treatment of which set of patients gets affected due to lack of

psychological, emotional and spiritual needs in the Indian context?

The answer to the question led to the identification of the Geriatric group on the basis of the