Sensory rooms are used as spaced for calming and reducing distress in mental health units, schools, nursing homes, shopping centres, sports venues and other community spaces. These rooms are designed to support sensory modulation through calming sensory input such as lighting, textures, sounds, and visual input. One common feature of these rooms, however, raises an important question: the use of bubble columns. These visually appealing, colourful, water-filled tubes are often seen in sensory rooms, but are they still serving their intended purpose, or are they unintentionally reinforcing a sense of infantilisation for adults?
Read moreTherapy rooms and waiting rooms: designing for sensory needs
Therapy room with grey lounge, green cushions, a white blanket and a plant on a small table. We would remove the aromatherapy sticks though!
At Sensory Modulation Brisbane, we have been advocating for Universal Design in Mental Health Units for Sensory Sensitivities and we would recommend that this is expanded to therapy rooms, waiting rooms and all health care spaces.
Many people who attend Therapy practices have sensory processing patterns that are more sensitive, more avoiding, or more seeking or more missing of sensations than others and this can vary between different senses. This includes:
· Autistics have sensory processing differences recognised as a diagnostic criteria. (DSM5)
· People with PTSD often have reactivity and hypervigilance to certain sensations
· People with schizophrenia often have auditory processing and visual perception challenges.
· ADHDers frequently have sensory processing differences (Schulze 2020)
· A high percentage of people with mental illness have interoceptive difficulties
Read moreHow do you do Sensory Modulation on an Impatient Mental Health Unit without a Sensory Room?
A Sensory Room is a dedicated room with an array of sensory items and strategies for people to trial and use to support their development of self-management skills and to change their moods through Sensory Modulation*. Sensory rooms have been found to be useful in many mental health units by those who use them. (Champagne, 2011).
Often people express that they would like to use Sensory Modulation, but that their organisation is unable to fund a Sensory Room or find the space to put one. The good news is that is possible to use Sensory Modulation on an inpatient ward or emergency department without a Sensory Room through the use of low cost or existing sensory items or considering the environment.
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