Environment and mental health: the impact of new buildings on the programs and organization of a psychiatric hospital

Abstract

The reciprocal relationship between the effects of the physical environment and the programs conducted in that environment are discussed, with a particular emphasis on the effects of change in the physical environment. Participant observers were present before, during, and after the relocation of part of a provincial mental hospital from an archaic nineteenth‐century building to modern facilities on the same grounds. Data from the study, as well as historical material, are offered to illustrate some of the ways in which changed values and attitudes about mental illness are linked to modifications in physical settings where treatment is given.