DESIGN IN MENTAL HEALTH 2022


A service-user’s view on improving care spaces


Service-users’ lived experience in mental healthcare facilities – and particularly their views on the features and characteristics of the environment that most hindered or enhanced their recovery, can provide valuable insights. At June’s Design in Mental Health 2022 conference, Nick Smith, who spent a lengthy period as an inpatient at Bradford’s Lynfield Mount Hospital, reflected on some of his most challenging times. He was joined by Cath Lake from P+HS Architects, which has developed plans to create a modern, light, bright, and therapeutic replacement for the hospital.


In his profile in the official guide to this year’s Design in Mental Health conference, exhibition, and awards – held at the Coventry Building Society Arena from 8-9 June – former service-user, Nick Smith, pulled no punches in explaining that, after ‘a childhood of neglect, abuse, and violence’, during which he ‘developed his own demons’, he attempted suicide aged 19, and was admitted to a mental healthcare facility as an inpatient. He spent most of his 20s ‘drunk and in and out of therapies’, and in 2011, aged 32, ‘lost hope of being a decent dad’ to his five-year- old daughter, and planned to end his life. At that low point, he was admitted to Bradford’s Lynfield Mount Hospital, where – he told delegates at DiMH 2022 – he felt he had ‘no personality’, and ‘didn’t know what to do’. Feeling his treatment there did him ‘more harm than good’, he put in a complaint, and on returning home, firmly


hoped he would never have to go back into inpatient care.


Invited to discuss experiences The complaint resulted in an invitation from the local care Trust, Bradford District Care NHS Foundation Trust, to discuss his experiences, and he not only helped the Trust’s Patient Experience Team, but also became a public governor for his local area. Today he has his own mental health community interest company, Missing Peace Wellbeing + Support: its goal is to reduce the number of people who may need a psychiatric hospital – ‘by supporting them in their community’. He says: “I’m confident that I’ll now never go back into hospital; in fact I’m happy and in control, and I believe others can get to that state too. While people undoubtedly need psychiatric services, clinics, and psychiatric hospitals, to keep them safe,


I’m passionate that these spaces should be as safe, comfortable, and inspiring, as they should be.”


Architect’s role Speaking in a ‘Collaboration and Co- design – Shared Learning’ session on the conference’s first day, Nick Smith was introduced by DiMHN Board member, Cath Lake, who in her ‘day job’ is a director at P+HS Architects, and the practice’s Mental Health lead. The architect and DiMHN board member, who spoke interestingly in tandem with the former service-user, is leading on the design for a major redevelopment of Lynfield Mount Hospital, and she explained that while the project – to create a new, 72-bedded acute inpatient mental health facility on the site – has progressed to RIBA Stage 2 (Outline Design), the necessary funding has yet to be secured. Before Nick Smith spoke, she said:


“The design has been progressed – right from the start – with stakeholders very much part of the process. Nick, who will shortly describe his own experiences as an inpatient, and how they have informed his thinking, is a brilliant artist, but is also passionate about design. When people from different personal and professional backgrounds come together, and find out what makes eachother tick, that’s when we get real stakeholder engagement. We find out what brings joy in pretty horrible times, and what can affect people badly. We move forward on that basis from the very start. Nick, with whom I have developed a close rapport, has been a key stakeholder in the new hospital’s design, and is mainly – in his part of the talk – going to talk about the existing Lynfield Mount inpatient facility, and his time there.”


Nick Smith, who spent a lengthy period as an inpatient at Bradford’s Lynfield Mount Hospital, and architect, Cath Lake, of P+HS Architects, gave an engaging joint address at DiMH 2022.


THE NETWORK | AUGUST 2022


Not a good start Beginning his part of the session, Nick Smith showed a slide of the exterior of the existing hospital, and explained: “I was in here in 2011, and decided I no longer wanted to be alive.” He next showed a photo of the rather ‘drab and beige’, and


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