Search

The downsizing of psychiatric hospitals has created a new institutional landscape in the local community to support people with severe mental problems in their daily living. This study explores meeting places in Norway from the users' perspectives. The users used four metaphors to describe these meeting places: "like a home", "like a family", "like a landing ground" and "like a trampoline". The users have decorated the interiors of the meeting places with hearts made from various materials, and these could be considered as symbols of the places. The metaphors used: the hearts and the rooms and interiors, reflect old ideas about calmness and dignity rather than new ideas based on New Public Management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Places where people live are important for their personal and social lives. This is also the case for people with mental health problems living in supported housing. To summarise the existing knowledge, we conducted a systematic review of 13 studies with different methodologies regarding the built environment in supported housing and examined their findings in a thematic analysis. The built environment of supported housing involves three important and interrelated themes: well-being, social identity and privacy. If overregulated by professionals or located in problematic neighbourhoods or buildings, the settings could be an obstacle to recovery. If understood as meaningful places with scope for control by the tenants or with amenities nearby, the settings could aid recovery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]