An emerging best practice for behavioral health environments is to design spaces that minimize or eliminate areas where patients are secluded or restrained. The aim is to develop an environment designed to de-escalate,  avoiding situations where medical staff need to physically intervene and restrain patients, which can be a traumatic act. Behavioral health environments often […]

Behavioral healthcare remains an underfunded service line, and Array strives to promote the important work of our clients who are focusing on this stigmatized specialty. In recent years, we’ve worked with Children’s Hospital of The King’s Daughters, One Brooklyn Health System, Holyoke Medical Center, Children’s National Hospital and others to expand behavioral health services. That […]

Challenge Holyoke Medical Center and Signet Health are collaborating on developing an inpatient behavioral health pavilion on Holyoke Medical Center’s campus to provide services to an underserved population in their community. Driving the need was a recent closure of behavioral beds at a nearby hospital. To achieve this goal, the developer and Hospital administration needed […]

Challenge In collaboration with Margulies Perruzzi, Array was engaged by MaineHealth to design inpatient behavioral health units within under-utilized floors at Southern Maine Health Care Medical Center. Key stakeholders established the immediate need for a minimum of 42 adult behavioral healthcare beds on three floors. Solution Spatial characteristics of the design  such as community and […]

Recently, Pat Malick and I were invited to present a webinar sponsored by the American Institute of Architects and their Academy of Architecture for Health. We focused the presentation around our work with the administrative and clinical teams at Children’s Hospital of The King’s Daughters (CHKD), sharing how we developed a framework for behavioral health […]

I was introduced to healthcare architecture while contributing to the completion of a new adult inpatient behavioral center that redefined how a patient’s environment of care can enhance their response to mental and behavioral health treatment programs. The adult building was one of several new facilities that initiated an entire campus redevelopment aimed at improving […]

Across the US, the demand for inpatient behavioral health services continues to surge, particularly within the child and adolescent demographic. According to a CDC/NCHS study, 6% of youth ages 12 to 19 are being treated with psychotropic medication for a psychiatric disorder or condition. Coupled with research that indicates one in five Americans live with […]

The FGI Guidelines for Design and Construction has been used for decades to implement minimum standards for healthcare buildings. What began as a federal document to implement Congressional legislation from 1946 has since evolved into a document reviewed and revised on a regular cycle of four years.