Abstract
AbstractBackgroundThe salutary effect of window views on greenery for inpatients in hospitals on length of stay and recovery rate has been repeatedly shown, however, not for psychiatric inpatients. The study assessed the association between a window view on green trees or man-made objects and brightness of the room on length of stay in a sample of psychiatric inpatients from one clinic.MethodsData records of 244 psychiatric inpatients (mean age in years 41.8; SD = 11.8; 59.8% female, length of stay varying between 7 and 100 days) that were admitted between May 2013 and October 2018 with affective disorders were examined. Window view was assessed with images taken from each room and classified into showing man-made objects or green trees. The percentage of green within each image was also calculated as greenness of the view. Brightness was assessed with a luxmeter.ResultsAlthough no effect was found for the dichotomous measures (man-made objects vs. green trees), a suppression effect emerged for percentage of green and brightness. The results indicate that both greenness of the window view as well as brightness significantly reduce length of stay in psychiatric inpatients with affective disorders.ConclusionsThe suppression effect likely results from the characteristics of the windows; the greenest rooms also being the darkest. Due to the infrastructure of the ward, greenness and brightness came at the expense of each other. The results generally support the importance of a view into greenery and natural sunlight for recovery.
Highlights
Literature on environmental psychology shows that exposure to natural environments exhibits salutary effects on human health and well-being [1,2,3,4]
We investigated whether length of stay was impacted by the respective window view in a sample of psychiatric inpatients diagnosed with affective disorder that was matched according to age-range, window view, and time of year to the sample of patients reported by Ulrich [12]
We replaced the categorical classification of the window views with a continuous covariate given by the ratio of green pixel in the image taken from the window view to account for the categories man-made vs trees
Summary
Literature on environmental psychology shows that exposure to natural environments exhibits salutary effects on human health and well-being [1,2,3,4]. Ulrich [12] related the perceived beneficial effect of natural environments to quantifiable differences in recovery rates of inpatients He found shorter postoperative hospital stays and lower use of potent analgesics in a sample of surgical patients with windows in the hospital room facing a tree rather than a brick wall. To the best of our knowledge, Ulrichs study has not been replicated in a sample of psychiatric patients, other associations of design characteristics and psychiatric inpatients have been analyzed [18] Another environmental aspect that has shown to be beneficial for depressive patients is light exposure to bright light (usually around 10’000 lux), which is an established additional procedure in the treatment of seasonal and non-seasonal affective disorders [19, 20]. The results generally support the strategy of hospital architects to enable a view into greenery and to provide access to natural sunlight
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