© Universität Bielefeld/O. Krato
The Living and Recovery Environment of People with Mental Illness in the Context of Therapeutic Landscapes (Lebensland)
Current Status and Need for Action
Junior Research Group "Healthy Places - Therapeutic Landscapes" Funded by the Peter Beate Heller-Stiftung of the Stifterverband, Germany
The concept of "therapeutic landscapes" emphasises the healing effect of environments as well as places for recovery from illness or their influence on psychological or mental health. In the sense of a salutogenetic orientation, the preservation and promotion of health through the optimal use of environmental resources is gaining in importance, so that the content of the concept of therapeutic landscapes is also becoming increasingly extensive and at the same time more confusing. The junior research group "Healthy Places - Therapeutic Landscapes" is investigating the living environments of mentally ill people in the setting of psychiatric institutions in Germany, since the success of the patients' treatment is significantly influenced by the environments. These include the immediate environment (clinic/clinic environment), the direct surroundings (street, neighbourhood, district) and the higher-level living environment (city, village, etc.). To answer the research question of whether and, if so, which therapeutic landscapes have an influence on mentally ill people in terms of health and well-being in the clinical setting, the inter- and transdisciplinary research project draws on a health-scientific, sociological, psychological, medical and landscape-ecological spectrum of methods. Potentials and risks of therapy spaces inside the clinics and green outdoor areas are investigated as therapeutic landscapes. Virtual landscapes are also the subject of investigation in the context of the clinical setting against the background of their health effects.
- Duration & Sponsor
- Publications
2022 | Article
Therapeutic landscapes and psychiatric care facilities: A qualitative meta-analysis
Oeljeklaus L, Schmid H-L, Kornfeld Z, Hornberg C, Norra C, Zerbe S, McCall T (2022)
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 19(3). https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19031490
Group Composition:
Researchers from Bielefeld University, Ruhr University Bochum and the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano (South Tyrol) are working together in the project.
- Univ.-Prof'in. Dr. med. Claudia Hornberg; graduate biologist, graduate ecologist
Univ.-Prof.'in Dr. med. Claudia Hornberg
Professur für Sustainable Environmental Health Sciences
- Telephone
- +49 521 106-67423
- Telephone secretary
- +49 521 106-86962
- Dr. PH. Timothy McCall
- PD Dr. med. Christine Norra
- Univ.-Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Stefan Zerbe
- PD Dr. phil. habil. Dr. rer. nat. Dipl.-Psych. Kristina Henning-Fast
Stipendiaries
- Hannah-Lea Schmid
Hannah-Lea Schmid (M.Sc.) has been a doctoral stipendiary in the junior research group "Healthy Places - Therapeutic Landscapes" at the Medical School OWL since November 2020. In the context of her doctorate, she is primarily concerned with the natural therapeutic landscape of psychiatric clinics.
She completed her bachelor's degree in biology at the Freie Universität Berlin; her bachelor's thesis dealt with the molecular diversity of archaeorhizomycetes. Her interest in ecology and the environment and their impact on humans led her to her Master's degree in Urban Ecology at the Technische Universität Berlin. During her studies, she worked as a student assistant with teaching duties at the Institute of Ecology. As part of her Master's thesis, she analysed the perception of green living environments from the window perspective.
Main Research Interests
- Health-relevant ecosystem services
- Environmental perception
- Green infrastructure and urban greening
- Environmental justice
Projects
- “HealthyLiving - Strategie und Planungsinstrument für gesundheitsförderndes Wohnumfeldgrün in der Stadt der Zukunft” ["HealthyLiving - Strategy and Planning Tool for Health-Promoting Living Environments in the City of the Future"] (funded by the Fritz and Hildegard Berg Foundation of the Stifterverband)
- Junior Research Group "The Living and Recovery Environment of Mentally Ill People as Therapeutic Landscapes? Current Status and Need for Action (LebensLand)" (funded by the Peter Beate Heller Stiftung of the Stifterverband)
Publications
- Schmid, Hannah-Lea, and Ina Säumel. "Outlook and Insights: Perception of Residential Greenery in Multistorey Housing Estates in Berlin, Germany". Urban Forestry & Urban Greening 63 (1 August 2021): 127231. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ufug.2021.127231.
- Michel Rinderhagen
Michel Rinderhagen has been a stipendiary in the LebensLand junior research group since May 2021. He comes from the field of environmental psychology. Within the Lebensland project and the concept of therapeutic landscapes, he is mainly interested in how the natural and social environment affects people and how individual elements of the natural environment can be used to improve human well-being.
Human thinking and behaviour has always interested him, so he toyed with the idea of studying psychology early on. After his work-and-travel stay in New Zealand, he started a bachelor's degree in psychology at Radboud University in Nijmegen. During his semester abroad in Asheville, North Carolina, he spent a lot of his free time in nature hiking in the Blue Ridge Mountains and decided there to dedicate more of his professional life to the environment. Following his interest in human-environment interactions, he enrolled in the Master's programme "Environmental Psychology" at the University of Groningen and successfully completed it in 2020.
In his Master's thesis, he focused on risk perception and willingness to act in relation to two consequences of climate change (droughts and floods) and the role of perceived effectiveness of actions in dealing with climate change.
Before joining the Lebensland project, he was employed as an academic co-worker at the Medical School OWL at Bielefeld University between November 2020 and May 2021. There, as part of research group 1 Sustainable Environmental Health Sciences, he worked on the project "Environmental Awareness and Risk Perception in Times of the SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic in Germany", where, among other things, connections between the risk perception of the Corona pandemic and climate change could be shown.
Research Interests:
- Environmental psychology
- Environment and health/resilience
- Nature connectedness and sustainability
- Climate protection and climate adaptation
Clinics as Cooperation Partners
There is close cooperation with various actors at the LWL-Kliniken in Paderborn and Gütersloh and at the Evangelisches Klinikum Bethel.