Designing for Therapeutic Environments

A Review of Research

David Canter, Sandra Canter

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9781040418239

Originally published in 1979, Therapeutic Environments brings together a set of previously unpublished accounts of studies by internationally recognized experts in North America and Britain, of the full range of places which are designed to facilitate the processes of healing, caring and helping. The papers have been collected and edited by David Canter, an Environmental Psychologist who has published a number of books on people and buildings, and Sandra Canter, a Clinical Psychologist, who has published previously on the determinants of personality and the effect of vitamins.

During the previous two decades there had been a growing outcry in both Europe and North America against the environments in which society housed those undergoing treatment or requiring care and attention. Clearly, institutions should not make their inmates worse and the consensus of opinion at the time was that, if they were not actually making people worse, the 'caring' buildings certainly were not helping to make them better.

In response to this awakened desire to produce physical environments which contributed positively to the therapeutic process, this book drew together specially commissioned papers written by those who had been actively involved in studying or creating therapeutic environments, both in Britain and America. Forming a unique overview of the present state of thought and action in this increasingly important area of design, Therapeutic Environments was an important work of reference, not only for clinical, community and environmental psychologists, but for all social work groups and aware architects with an active interest in the planning and operation of environments with a specialist 'caring' responsibility.

This book is a re-issue originally published in 1979. The language used is a reflection of its era and no offence is meant by the Publishers to any reader by this re-publication.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Acknowledgments
• Contributors
• Contents
• Building for Therapy
• Understanding and Evaluating Therapeutic Environments for Children
• Physical Environments for Autistic Children—Four Case Studies
• The Adventure Playground as a Therapeutic Environment
• Physical Conditions and Management Practices for Mentally Retarded Children
• ‘Normal’ Environment with a Plus for the Mentally Retarded
• A Therapeutic Environment for Forensic Patients
• Mental Patients and Nurses Rate Habitability
• Environmental Psychology in Psychiatric Hospital Settings
• Therapeutic Environments for the Aged
• Homes for Old People: Towards a Positive Environment
• Evaluating Acute General Hospitals
• Creating Therapeutic Environments
• Author Index
• Subject Index