Why chairs matter. Or if GPs surgeries feel welcoming, can we better treat mental illness?

GP waiting rooms.
For many, they are the point of entry into the Mental Health System. They are the first thing you are met with after you win the internal debate that goes something like “Do I really need help? Maybe it’s not so bad? Oh no...no it’s definitely that bad...but should I...?..I have to...I can’t....I should...Just go”

Walking into that space was/will be part of a continued decision I wrestle with. Will I carry on trying to get better or give up? That space sets the tone for the rest of someone’s treatment — hopeless, pointless, I’m not a priority, I don’t matter.....or I’ll be okay, I’m cared for, there’s light at the end of the tunnel. I’m not the only person who’s made that first step to do something about their mental health and come out worse. I know people who come out already beaten. They feel that they know the outcome of their story already. There is something about the environment that is telling us this... there’s something in the water only it’s not in the water, it’s on the walls, the floor, the ceiling. If your mental illness is telling you you’re worthless, the last thing you need is your environment telling you the same. How many other people like me have given up on their treatment not because they got better, but because they couldn’t be in that environment any longer?

There is a lot of time and energy put into training GPs in Mental Health, in reducing stigma, and of course, this is huge, but it’s not the whole story. I have had unsympathetic doctors, doctors who didn’t believe me, doctors who thought I smiled too much to have depression, but I’ve also had amazing doctors, kind people who treated me like a human and genuinely cared. Either way, I still gave up on my treatment....one day I just wouldn’t go back. Sometimes I had an excuse, I was moving town, I needed to re-register with the GP, but I never got around to it... Sometimes I pretended I couldn’t get an appointment in time before my meds ran out, The NHS is so busy, what can you do!... when really I have been avoiding booking one...Sometimes I just stopped going and I wouldn’t bother with an excuse. Because I dreaded going so much I went cold turkey on antidepressants on multiple occasions, which isn’t particularly fun or clever.

I just couldn’t bear to be in that sad space...with the tape marking out an orderly line to the badly laminated reception desk, sitting on plastic feeling like you are on display during your most vulnerable moment until the screen barks out your name because the doctor is ready to see you now, the confusing labyrinth of corridors, the shitty posters on the crappy notice boards. The unkind chairs! I never met a chair so mean. I felt like I was in detention.. I felt like I must have done something wrong to be here — on a deeply subconscious level I felt like I’d been put on the naughty step. It wasn’t a nice feeling. It wasn’t an experience I relished.

I got my first diagnosis 10 years ago, I only really started to make real progress last year. That’s 9 years of really not being okay. I was able to get up, go to work, look presentable, so I sort of got away with my unfinished attempt at recovery... but in reality, I was ruining myself and my physical health, I acted productive, but I wasn’t reaching my potential, existing when I could have been thriving. I wonder if my experience had been a more positive one, if on that first try (or second, or third, or fourth) I’d been able to stick it out, would I have begun the process of finding a healthier me sooner? I wonder how many other people feel the same way?

When it is already hard work to simply book an appointment..to even accept that you need help, let’s not make it any harder. Let’s have kind chairs! Let’s have chairs as kind as our best doctors. Let’s have colour, and comfort, and inspiration on the walls. Let’s have design that helps instead of hinders. If we create supportive environments for our mentally unwell we also create a supportive environment for everyone else — we all benefit from a calmer, more compassionate, more loving environment.

Since Covid has hit, there will be more and more people needing help with their mental health, there will be more and more people sitting in sad waiting rooms, but this time with even less humanity; the unkind chairs will be pushed apart 2m, plastic barriers and arrows to the hand wash will reign supreme. Or maybe the new-age waiting room; a virtual holding space playing elevator music whilst you try and decide not to kill yourself? Either way, virtual or otherwise, we as designers have a responsibility to these spaces. Let’s design for joy, let our spaces and our chairs represent the best we can offer.

I’m Lottie and I, along with my colleagues at Art in Site, support kind chairs.