Evaluating the Approach of the Impact of Architecture on the Treatment Process of Mentally-ill Patients

Abstract

Experts in mental health have presented this idea for a long time that the physical environment in which treatment takes place affects the treatment process and its consequences. With attention to the idea that architecture is a devise in the treatment process, it is the combination of factors and parts of the environmental and architectural designing that creates a synthetic treatment environment. It discusses the positive impacts of the special factors and parts on the patients and the personnel and shows that how effective the environment is in the field of psychotherapy and how it can be an important and effective tool in the patients' human functioning and how it decreases the extreme mental symptoms of the patients and change the view of the society regarding these patients. The goal of this project is to search the fields of psychology and architecture and the connection between these two and also the amount of their mutual impact on each other and trying to understand the connection between psyche and psychology, architecture and space. Therefore, it has been tried to analyze and understand the atmosphere and location in architecture in a psychological light and also the impact of architecture and location on people's psyche. Furthermore, since the subject of the project is designing a center for keeping mentally ill patients, knowing the characteristics and needs of the patients to this center (those who confer only to improve their lives or to get consultation and help for solving their problems rather than those patients who suffer from different disorders but are not willing to refer to these centers) seems necessary. The result is that this peaceful center for people to spend their time not only helps them improve their spiritual and mental lives but also diminishes the increase in the spiritual pressures of urbanization to large extent and decreases the number of future mentally ill patients.