| Title |
Physical Environment of Psychiatric Hospitals and the Characteristic of Psychiatric Wards in Japan |
| Keywords |
Psychiatric Hospital ; Psychiatric Ward ; Physical Environment ; Psychiatric Patients |
| Abstract |
So far, it is observed that the healing environment is often neglected and hampered by merely protecting patients through guarding them with metallic lattices and such. A psychiatric hospital deserves to be a psychological healing environment for the patients. This feature calls for a deliberate understanding toward psychiatric patients in planning psychiatric hospital.
This is a study on the physical environment of psychiatric hospitals in Japan. The study includes data from 554 psychiatric units, 8,214 patient's rooms, 28,195 patients from 129 facilities located in Japan since the year 2000. Insufficiencies in the room space of general patients are evident in most of the cases. The ratio of multi-bed rooms is also considerably higher than the expected level. The existence of protective measures in the patients’rooms is quite prevalent while the required ancillary facilities like wash basins, toilets, tables, and wardrobes, etc. are observed considerably less than the expected level.
About characteristics of psychiatric patients in each ward, there are many patients possessing different diseases and symptoms in the same ward. The ward classification by the present building standard is questionable it will function better as a system of the treatment environment, which deliver medical services properly to psychiatric patients, because each patient needs a different physical environment. To build an effective environment in a psychiatric ward for patients, it is important to plan ward characteristics which fit for patients’ treatment, before differentiating wards through the arranging of medical personnel and patients. |