Evolution of the thesis topic...Retreat & Refuge versus Confinement & Surveillance

Things emerging as significant areas of 'research' for my thesis:

• evidence based design for hospitals (sounds boring but vitally important for 'humanised' design)
• modern treatment of psychiatric disorders, for example
• only acute cases tend to be 'hospitalised', all others use community-based treatment, compared with the old model of segregating patients, taking them out of their community and retreating into the country
• nature as a healing factor is being isolated into small manageble units to bring inside the hospital rather than the hospital being within a natural setting as such - eg. pictures, views outside, courtyards inside the building itself rather than the building being physically sited within a rural area or large park like grounds
• 'confinement and surveillance' - the similarity between prisons and old psychiatric hospitals (control, security, surveillance)
• 'retreat & refuge' - also the similarity between spas/retreats and psychiatric hospitals (retreat & refuge)

So perhaps instead of a mental health unit, the design could be 'preventative' mental health in the form of a retreat or refuge. Like a spa but with an emphasis on restorative of mental health rather than pampering and luxury.  A place anyone could go, without the stigma of 'mental illness'.