Mental Healthcare ‘Hubs’/Building Design


Halifax’s ‘hub’ at the heart of the community


Focusing on stamping out the mental health stigma and providing a ‘front door on the high street’, P+HS Architects has been tasked by the local mental healthcare Trust with designing two community hub facilities within Barnsley and Halifax to provide easily accessible, local, and welcoming buildings. Here Derek Shepherd, associate at the practice, and a highly experienced healthcare designer, reports.


Speaking at a mental health conference in London on 19 January this year, co-hosted by Minister of Stare for Care, Norman Lamb, Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, called on all NHS Trusts to commit to a new ambition for ‘zero suicides’. In his speech, he said: “Imagine breaking your leg, only to be told that your nearest care facility was half way across the country, with a long waiting list, and no guarantees about when you’ll actually get the help you need. Or developing diabetes, but being too scared to tell your family, friends, and your boss about what’s happening, because you are worried about how they might react, and possibly losing your job. He continued: “If any of these things


happened to someone with a serious physical health condition in our country, there would quite rightly be outrage. It would be on the front


page of every national newspaper, and dominate Prime Minister’s Questions every week. People would be out on the streets calling for reform. But this is exactly the kind of second-class treatment that people with mental health issues have had to endure for decades.”


STILL ‘A TABOO SUBJECT’ It would seem that discussion of a person’s mental health is still often seen as a taboo subject. A new survey by the mental health anti-stigma campaign, Time to Change, run by the leading mental health charities, Mind and Rethink Mental Illness, reveals that nearly 60% of people with a mental health problem are waiting over a year to tell the people closest to them about it. The data shows that stigma is still preventing people from getting support from their family and friends when they need it most. This is an increasingly problematic issue for the young, and those isolated with no support, particularly when immediate response and assistance in time of need have often been difficult to find. So, how are we to provide help to the individual if we can’t change the perception of a community?


The proposal is to develop a new Community Health Hub for SWYPFT on the site of an existing acute healthcare building on Halifax’s Great Albion Street.


22 THE NETWORK April 2015


LITTLE COMMUNITY CONNECTION In the past much inpatient mental healthcare was delivered from hospital sites known as ‘asylums’ built in out-of-town locations heavily screened and separate from society. While such facilities were often sited in woodland environments, and, as such, provided quiet contemplative spaces, it was rare for any connection to the local community to occur, and a number of such treatment facilities were built upon the


Speaking at a mental health conference at The King’s Fund in London on 19 January this year, Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, called ‘for every part of the NHS’ to “commit to a new ambition for ‘zero suicides’.”


permise of ‘out of sight, out of mind’. In 1961 Enoch Powell famously made ‘The Water Tower Speech’, slamming such institutions. He spoke of the ‘transition to community-based care’, the ‘horrors of the asylums’, the implications of the changes due, the services he envisaged, and the finances needed to facilitate them. The speech set the wheels turning for community care. Over the next 40 years asylums were slowly run down, but the increase in effective community services has taken longer to become a reality.


CHANGING AWARENESS’S POSITIVE IMPACT Fortunately, awareness is changing, and a greater understanding of how mental health problems can effect anyone at any time is being realised. Initiatives such as the ‘Time to Change’ campaign are working hard to change behaviours, as well as attitudes to mental health. The two charities, Mind and Rethink Mental Illness, decided to work together, combining their knowledge, skills, and expertise, in the biggest attempt yet in England to end the discrimination that surrounds mental health.


While changing perceptions can be a slow


‘It would seem that discussion of a person’s mental health is still often seen as a taboo subject’


Photo courtesy of The Cabinet Office.


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