Fixing a ‘Failing’ Mental Healthcare System: A Design-led Response

Synopsis

In June 2024, the British Medical Association (BMA) released a report titled, “It’s broken”: Doctors’ experiences on the frontline of a failing mental healthcare system. The report consolidates in-depth interviews with doctors across the mental health system, exploring their experiences of providing mental healthcare, including what helps and hinders them in providing good care to patients. From this, the BMA has identified five key problems (below) that need urgent attention.

In response to the report, we are exploring ways that good healthcare design can support the NHS in tackling these sizable challenges. Medical Architecture will hold a structured workshop with an NHS Trust, Healthcare Planning Consultant and other key experts by experience to develop a collaborative output of ideas and recommendations:

1. Funding is insufficient and not always used in a way that allows doctors to provide the care they want for patients. How do we use scarce funding wisely, should we reuse or replace inadequate facilities, and what role can strategic estate planning play?
2. There are not enough trained staff to meet the needs of people with mental illness. How can we design for efficient staffing levels, ensuring safety, security and a therapeutic environment? What role can design play in retaining and recruiting staff.
3. The different parts of the health and care system, both within and outside of the NHS, find it difficult to work together to support patients. How do we better integrate services and enable collaboration? What lessons can we learn from integrated community healthcare?
4. Our society is not set up to support people’s mental health and to prevent the onset of mental illness. What role can healthcare facilities play in promoting a preventative approach to mental illness? Is there a role for smaller community-based mental health facilities?
5. Pressures on the system are damaging patient care and particularly affecting certain groups, such as children or people with neurodevelopmental disorders. How do we design specialist facilities which are appropriate and sustainable?

The presentation will provide an overview of the findings.

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