Therapeutic environments of dayrooms in adult psychiatric settings : an integrative literature review

Abstract

Mental illness has plagued mankind since the beginning of time. It was not until the mid-1700s that scientific approaches were considered to ameliorate the suffering of the human psyche. Patients were hospitalized in asylums for the purpose of containment with little hope of recovery from mental illness. During the twentieth century, great advances were made in various therapeutic modalities such as psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, and psychopharmacology to treat mental disorders. Treatment was focused on recovery, and more successes in functionality were seen. Most psychiatric, inpatient units have a common area known as the dayroom where patients are able to commune with other patients. The purpose of this integrative literature review was to search for literature of best practices regarding the physical structure of therapeutic environments in psychiatric dayrooms. This integrative literature review was performed by searching four databases for articles on the therapeutic environments of dayrooms in adult inpatient psychiatric settings. A variety of search terms were developed and used in this exploration. The search resulted in zero articles found. This points to a gap in the literature and opens the field for research to be conducted on the environments of this important room in psychiatric inpatient units. A limitation of this literature review was that databases more specific to architecture and design were not searched and those might yield some results in the literature.