Today, we’re talking about Human-Centered Safety®: Seeing Mental Health through a Different Lens.

Mental health has been a vexing problem in America, for many reason but not the least of which has been the stigma surrounding it. The good news is there’s progress, but more than increasing access to treatment, there’s the challenge of providing the proper space for treatment. It’s not just a safety issue for patients. It’s a safety issue for staff. Studies have shown that up to half of care staff experience some form of aggression from patients, which takes a toll.

While efforts focus on making spaces safe from patients doing harm to themselves, only in the past few years has research shifted to look at how evidence-grounded stress-reducing features could possibly reduce incidents of aggression overall in psychiatric facilities.

At the forefront of some of this work are two people at BWBR. 

Scott Holmes is a medical planner and architect who has been involved in the design of mental health projects ranging from inpatient to residential to pediatric/adolescent care. Melanie Baumhover is also an architect and principal who has focused on projects that have a dramatic impact on the health and wellbeing of individuals. Together, they've honed BWBR’s process around Human-Centered Safety®, an approach to design that looks at safety through the lenses of dignity, hope, and personal control. It's an approach that is showing positive results for patients and the people caring for them.  

Hosted by James Lockwood.

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