Beyond the Visible: Space, Place & Power in Mental Health

This symposium seeks to make designers and architects aware of their capacity to improve access to and perceptions of mental health. One-quarter of the global population will suffer from mental illness at some stage of life. The built environment—the setting where we live and work—therefore becomes an urgent site for addressing mental health. The rise of urban inequality has huge impacts on access to mental health services. This symposium will explore issues of mental health at three scales: the hospital, the home, and the city. This inaugural symposium is part of a long-term Initiative at Yale, building on the work of the Yale Mental Health Colloquium which took place in 2019. In engaging an interdisciplinary team to explore these themes, we can begin to understand how practitioners influence design methods for mental health in the built environment.