Healing Spaces Research Articles

‘In it together’: activist teachers of color networks combating isolation

ABSTRACT Teachers of Color experience isolation due to racial microaggressions and institutional racism throughout their careers, leading to trauma and higher levels of teacher turnover in the profession. In this study, we use the ‘pedagogy of activism’and scholarship on microaggressionsto explore how activist teachers of Color seek support to combat isolation and harm through participation in teacher activist networks. Using qualitative methods, we investigated the experiences of 26 activist teachers of Color from across the United States. We found that teacher activist networks were key to creating healing spaces for coping with the effects of microaggressions, and that the pedagogy of activism fostered agency to push back against racist policies and institutions. These findings have implications for sustaining diversity in the teacher workforce.

Cultivating Organizations as Healing Spaces: A Typology for Responding to Suffering and Advancing Social Justice

Historic inequities exacerbated by COVID-19 and spotlighted by social justice movements like Black Lives Matter have reinforced the necessity and urgency for societies and organizations to bring healing into focus. However, few integrated models exist within management and organization scholarship to guide practice. In response, our focus aims to unpack how organizations can become healing spaces. This paper offers a holistic definition of healing as the foundation for a new conceptual model of organizations as healing spaces. Drawing upon literature from clinical psychology, social psychology, and political science, we identify four perspectives that address healing in organizational contexts: (1) restorative justice, (2) posttraumatic growth, (3) relational cultural theory, and (4) dignity. These healing modalities represent prominent views of how healing can be achieved at the individual, dyadic, organizational, and societal levels. Synthesizing and building on these perspectives, we develop a typology that illustrates three ways organizations can function as healing spaces — Emergent, Endeavoring, and Exemplifying — representing a range of opportunities for how organizations can better respond to suffering. These spaces of healing are differentiated across seven dimensions, including source of harm, recipients of healing, facilitators of healing, focus of healing, length and strength of organizational attention, process of healing, and activators or enablers of healing. This research contributes to organizational healing research and to nascent social justice discussions in the management literature by exploring a range of opportunities for how organizations can better respond to suffering and substantively contribute to remedying harm from systematic bias against marginalized groups via healing.

The Importance of Domestic Space in the Times of COVID-19

This essay discusses a deep malaise of contemporary architecture, made more obvious by experiencing COVID-19 lockdowns for several months. Evidence-based arguments urge society to improve human health and well-being by re-considering the design of interior and exterior spaces. So far, predictions of how design will “improve” after COVID-19 just continue business-as-usual, ignoring accumulated evidence. Yet, the negative emotional experience of families cooped up during the pandemic reveals the failure of the standard approach to designing spaces. An architecture that adapts to human biology and psychology starts with the relatively new understanding of people interacting unconsciously with their environment and broadens it. A traditional design toolkit, augmented by the latest technology, can generate healing spaces as judged by their ability to enhance users’ subjective well-being. We recommend implementing specific design innovations to achieve this goal—replacing industrial-minimalism with biophilic and neuro-based design and using documented patterns that trigger feelings of happiness in users.

Afro-Nicaraguan Diasporas of Sexual Violence and Black Women’s Art as a Space for Healing

Afro-Nicaraguan Diasporas of Sexual Violence and Black Women’s Art as a Space for Healing

The Trauma Recovery Actions Checklist: Applying Mixed Methods to a Holistic Gender-Based Violence Recovery Actions Measure

Gender-Based Violence (GBV) trauma recovery models have evolved in such a way that survivors are viewed as actively engaging in a multitude of strategies. In addition to seeking help and coping, survivors engage in diverse lifestyle, social, spiritual, and practical strategies to promote their health and wellbeing. This exploratory sequential mixed-methods study develops an instrument to measure the holistic recovery actions used by GBV survivors. The qualitative phase combined recovery action codes from interviews with 50 GBV survivors in three different survivor samples to create an initial six-concept 41-item Trauma Recovery Actions Checklist (TRAC). The quantitative psychometrics phase used data from 289 American GBV survivors. Results revealed a five-factor 35-item final version (sharing/connecting; building positive emotions; reflecting and creating healing spaces; establishing security; and planning the future). There were positive significant correlations between sharing/connecting and depression scores, and between sharing/connecting, reflecting, and building security with PTSD scores. No correlations were found between any recovery action type and the barriers to help-seeking subscales of Problem Management Beliefs, Discrimination, or Unavailability. However, there were significant negative correlations between Shame and Financial barriers and Sharing/Connecting, and between Feeling Frozen, Constraints, and Establishing Security. Implications for research, clinical practice and ways of understanding survivorship recovery are suggested.

바이오필릭 디자인 기반 고등학교 치유공간 계획 연구

Various aspects of people’s lives interact with space. Especially the space in which teenagers who establish their identity live is very influential and important as it is a space in a time of establishing identity. As adolescent students' lives are biased toward education, they spend most of their time in school. However, schools are not providing students with a pleasant environment due to uniform space or aging environments. Problems with these spaces can cause stress, fatigue, etc. to students. Through biophilic design, which helps relieve stress, the school space can be planned as a healing space. This improves the quality of the space where students stay for a long time, improving the overall environmental atmosphere and achieving stress relief at the same time. Survey of actual high school students on how often they stay in high school spaces and their preferences for biophilic design. Based on the results, we can expect what biophilic design elements can be applied to space in high school to provide the most effective stress-healing effect for students.

Asian Attitudes and Perceptions Toward Hospital-At-Home: A Cross-Sectional Study.

Introduction: Hospital-at-Home (HaH) programmes are well-established in Australia, Europe, and the United States. However, there is limited experience in Asia, where the hospital is traditionally seen as a safe and trusted space for healing. This cross-sectional study aimed to explore attitudes and perceptions among patients and caregivers in Singapore toward this care model.Methods: A quantitative study design was adopted to collect data among patients and their caregivers from medical wards within two acute hospitals in Singapore. Using a series of closed-ended and open-ended questions, the investigator-administered survey aimed to explore barriers and facilitators determining patients' and caregivers' responses. The study questionnaire was pretested and validated. Data were summarised using descriptive statistics, and logistic regression was performed to determine key factors influencing patients' decisions to enrol in such programmes.Results: Survey responses were collected from 120 participants (101 patients, 19 caregivers; response rate: 76%), of which 87 respondents (72.5%) expressed willingness to try HaH if offered. Many respondents valued non-quantifiable programme benefits, including perceived gains in quality of life. Among them, reasons cited for acceptance included preference for the comfort of their home environment, presence of family members, and confidence toward remote monitoring modalities. Among respondents who were unwilling to accept HaH, a common reason indicated was stronger confidence toward hospital care.Discussion: Most patients surveyed were open to having acute care delivered in their home environment, and concerns expressed may largely be addressed by operational considerations. The findings provide useful insights toward the planning of HaH programmes in Singapore.

An Analysis of Gendering of Space in Historical Hospitals of Anatolia

Medical ethics, clinical practices, as well as privacy considerations affected the gender-space relationship in spaces of healing. Researchers to date have been analysed the historical hospitals of Anatolia in terms of their architecture, planning, art history, history of medicine, and even in terms of their functional systems, but not yet regarding their gendered space segregation. There are also limited studies related to the gender, religion, and secularism in historical hospitals outside of Anatolia. Hence, in this paper, historical hospitals of Anatolia have been chosen as case studies and analysed from the point of gendered perspective including how privacy, religion, culture, and gender issues shaped their architecture and planning. In Ottoman Empire, it is known that among the palace elites, there was limited access of women patients to the male doctors, but documented evidence of female attendants being employed in Ottoman hospitals belongs to later periods. In Ottoman dynasty there were also female patrons constructed hospitals for women and for the general public, demonstrating the power and status of women in the Ottoman palace. In addition, based on travellers’ accounts, old drawings, gravures, and archival resources, it is understood that there were separate units for women in Anatolian historical hospital. Those units included the patients’ rooms, wards, latrines, and even courtyards. The research showed that in Anatolian hospitals as the spaces for physical healing and medical training, gendered-space segregation have been acknowledged, at least to some extent in some certain space arrangements.

Uncovering the low-profile #MeToo movement: Towards a discursive politics of empowerment on Chinese social media

In China, a few posts related to #MeToo movement survived and remained online well after its peak and the state’s response in July 2018. This article proposes a theoretical framework that pays attention to discursive meaning-making and employs a broad notion of empowerment, referred to as ‘empowerment through discourse’, in order to offer a more nuanced understanding of the low-profile #MeToo movement in the Chinese context. This framework is used to analyse a corpus of uncensored #MeToo material, which appeared on Chinese social media. This article combines a discourse analysis of these posts and interviews with feminists from activist collectives to critically examine feminist empowerment by reflecting on survivor/victim narration and storytelling practices, digital media’s capacity to facilitate critical dialogue between witnesses and survivors/victims and activist collectives’ organising role in opening up a dialogic space for collective reading, listening and healing. These reflections lead to broader considerations on how notions of empowerment can spur collective action and structural change. In short, this article demonstrates the potential possibility of discursive change and reflects on this mode of feminist politics as a way to speak to empowerment in the Chinese context.

Unit offering trauma‐informed care for youth opens in Maryland

Delivering trauma‐informed care for children and adolescents and providing them with a safe and healing space to recover is the mission behind a new Baltimore‐based psychiatric unit that opened June 30 following more than three years of planning and construction.

Ticking the box of 'cultural safety' is not enough: why trauma-informed practice is critical to Indigenous healing.

It is critical that those working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities acknowledge and understand the impacts of trauma in order to engage in culturally safe practice. Recognising the role that historical and other traumas play in Indigenous people's communities and lives is a prerequisite for respectful and safe practice. Culturally safe, trauma-informed practice training makes cultural safety more achievable. Organisations that are serious about working and partnering with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are becoming 'trauma informed'. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are drawing immense strength and hope from understanding trauma and its impact on their lives. Sharing this knowledge with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations also has the potential to create safe healing spaces and interrupt trauma being passed on through generations. Trauma-informed cultural safety can allow profound change for individuals and the systems within which they practice.

Tū Tahanga: A Qualitative Descriptive Study of a Culturally Adapted Violence Prevention Programme in a Forensic Mental Health Service

There is growing evidence that culturally adapted, evidence-based, violence prevention programmes can have benefits for people in correctional and forensic mental health services. Adding to this evidence is crucial, given the over-representation of Indigenous people and ethnic minorities in such services. This qualitative descriptive study describes Tū Tahanga, which combines the ManAlive violence prevention programme, with Māori (Indigenous people of Aotearoa/New Zealand) cultural concepts. This was developed for Māori service users in a forensic mental health service. Content analysis was undertaken through interviews with participants in the group (N = 11). Core aspects of ManAlive were maintained. These aspects coexist with cultural concepts of a specific healing space, a holistic Māori model of health, and the creation of family like supportive relationships reinforced by living in the same facility. This description lays a platform for future evaluative research to determine the impact of the programme on reducing violent offending.

Community pantry: not just a place of charity but a space of communal healing.

Community pantry: not just a place of charity but a space of communal healing.

Under Oshun’s Gaze: Africana religions as a model for repatriation

ABSTRACT Questions about museums’ responsibilities to return looted African religious artifacts in their collections continue to create a number of challenges for US museums. This article assesses these challenges from the perspective of the Brooklyn Museum and the Fowler Museum at UCLA. While pioneering two different strategies, they both reimagine the restitution process as one where source communities and museum professionals work collaboratively together to cultivate relationships around the religious cosmologies of Africana religions and provide important case studies into the processes by which museums might move toward “propatriation”, a process that involves commissioning new artistic creations and repairing relationships. Ultimately, the Brooklyn Museum and the Fowler Museum demonstrate how the religious contexts of African ritual objects can serve as important catalysts for the transformation of museums into ritualized healing spaces where the remaking of relationships is made possible as is the recognition of museums’ participation in colonial violence and theft.

Study on the Plan for Cultural Activation of Preferred Promenade in Original Downtown; Mainly around Jungang-ro, Dongducheon-si

본고는 동두천시 중앙로 가로변을 중심으로 계획하고 있는 물리적 도로개선사업과 연계하여 걷고 싶은 거리로 거듭날 수 있는 문화적 활성화 방안을 모색하는데 목표를 두었다. 이를 위해 두 차례의 선행연구가 이루어졌고, 여기서는 이들 선행연구 결과 및 문헌자료 검토를 추가해 중앙로의 문화정착 및 확산을 지향한 구체적인 문화 프로그램을 기획하고 이의 효과적 실행을 위한 정책적 방안을 제시하는데 중점을 두었다. 문화 프로그램 기획은 지역의 정체성 및 장소성을 반영한 미(美), 신(神), 미(味)의 세 가지 전략이 제시하는 ‘반전매력’을 통해, 방문하고 싶고, 걷고 싶고, 힐링하고 싶은 공간으로 구축한다는 기본구상을 전제로 했고, 또한 기본구상을 실행하기 위해 ‘꼬낄 문화가드닝’이라는 상위 컨셉트와 ‘꼬낄 컬러가드닝’, ‘꼬낄 스타일링’, ‘꼬낄 문화발전소’, ‘꼬낄 친구들’이라는 하위테마를 선정한 다음, 각각의 세부 프로그램을 설계하였다. 그리고 문화 프로그램의 확산 및 지속성 확보 차원에서 H/W측면과 S/W측면, Hu/W측면에서 행정적 지원방안을 제시했다. 궁극적으로 동두천시는 현대사의 아픈 기억을 배경으로 평화, 인권, 배려, 문화 다양성 등 오늘날 우리가 추구해야 할 중심 가치를 갖고 있는 도시로서 여성과 어린이, 그리고 노인과 약자를 배려하는 가장 일상적이고 평화로운 삶이 보장되는 공간, 문화가 정착될 필요가 있고, 그런 문화 에너지의 충전을 위한 프로그램이 될 것으로 기대한다.For The goal of this article is to search plan for cultural activation which can rebuild Jungang-ro Dongducheon-si as preferred promenade in connection with physical road improvement project that is planned mainly around its avenue. To this end, preceding studies are made in 2 times. Their outcome & examination of literary materials are added to them in this article so that specific cultural program which pursues cultural settlement & expansion of Jungang-ro may be planned and politic program for its effective implementation may be presented. Plan on cultural program is based on the fundamental conception which is to construct space for visitation, walking & healing through reverse attraction presented by 3 strategies, beauty, God & taste that reflect identity & sense of place of the region. Further, superordinate concept, ‘Kkokkil Cultural Gardening’ & subordinate themes, ‘Kkokkil Color Gardening’, ‘Kkokkil Styling’, ‘Kkokkil Culture Plant’, ‘Kkokkil Friends’ are chosen first to implement fundamental conception so as to design each detailed program. Then, administrative support program is presented in the aspect of H/W, S/W & Hu/W to expand cultural program & to ensure continuity. In conclusion, as Dongducheon-si is a city which has central values that should be pursued by us these days such as peace, human right, consideration, cultural diversity, etc on the background of painful memory of modern history, space & culture which ensures the most quotidian and peaceful life in consideration of the aged and the weak needs to be settled and it is expected to be program for replenishing such cultural energy.

Echopoetics and unbelonging: Making sense of reconciliation in academia.

This article is a narrative and conceptual exploration of the journey towards practicing Indigenous allyship in an academic context. I begin by tracing a trajectory of coming to work with Indigenous peoples as a non-Indigenous, multiple migrant, and queer person of color situated as a therapist and educator in a Canadian academic institution's Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences. Anti-racist and de/postcolonial theories and concepts abound to label my experiences of tokenization, yet they invariably fall short of the nuanced and complex ways that both reconciliation and oppression unfold in the everyday. Beyond critical theories that speak with certainty of structural violence, I trace my trajectory of coming to understand my work with Indigenous peoples within and for healthcare curricula and community development. I describe an intertextual practice of echopoetics that is trying to make sense of a world where both historical trauma and daily aggressions continually reproduce inequities, in order to reveal spaces of possible hope and healing. Yet, what seems to be happening in this echopoetics is a process of unbelonging from the multiple cultural and institutional narratives in my surround-at times including those that intend to liberate. Focusing on the negation-"non"-as a non-Indigenous/non-White person, I provide a reflection on how this practice cultivates an unbelonging that becomes both a political stance at the point of invisibility, as well as a lonely yet definite healing.

Avowing as healing in qualitative inquiry: exceeding constructions of normative inquiry and confession in research with undocumented youth

This article problematizes the role of the interview as a methodological strategy that loses its easy replication when employed in studies with undocumented youth. We raise questions about the contingencies of conducting qualitative interviews with undocumented youth – what does it mean leverage the interview-event as a space of healing for them? What does it mean to recognize, or potentially mis-recognize one’s identity in the context of a research interview? How might inquiry function in exploring the uncertainties of an avowed identity and contribute not to normalization but to healing and justice? To engage such questions, we specifically examine the implications of interview practices as a dangerous (and productive) site where concerns of confession entangle with the potential for avowal as a resistive participatory practice. This paper argues that the confessional interview offers a moment of advocacy and healing through the avowal of their experience occupying undocumented identities.

Spazi della psichiatria tra passato e presente. Imparare a riflettere sulle srtorie di cura che raccontano

In our perspective, a reflection on education and caring in the psychiatric services cannot ignore their past, where spaces and times of care were completely different from those that characterize the healthcare system today. Many signs, traces, implicit and explicit fragments of that past can be found in current services. According to an “archeological” approach, we believe that those spaces have not been completely overcome and somehow, they are still part of our way of caring in psychiatric services. Hence, what traces of the past are left in those services? How and where can we find them? What should we preserve from the past and what should we overcome? In our work, we will try to find some of the traces and stories that could have contributed to shaping education and care in present day Italian psychiatric services. These developed as isolated spaces and places of confinement and oppression and are transforming into open places and healing spaces, aimed at promoting mental health.

Betty Ford Center launches $30 million expansion and renovation

The Betty Ford Center broke ground for its most significant expansion since opening four decades ago this month. The $30 million expansion and renovation of the Rancho Mirage, California, facility will enable the program to meet an increasing demand for services, including mental illness. “We have been honored to provide healing and hope to thousands of individuals and families at the Betty Ford Center, and with the continued generosity of grateful alumni and other donors, will build upon Mrs. Ford's legacy by transforming the campus and expanding access to quality care,” said Mark G. Mishek, president and CEO of the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation. “The impact of substance use and mental health disorders is growing due to a number of factors, including the tremendous stress and strain of the COVID‐19 pandemic,” Mishek added. “Amid record‐high overdoses, and the daily pain experienced by millions of families struggling through the chaos of addiction, it is imperative that we build capacity to help more people; create more flexible ways to engage with services; provide healing spaces that reflect the dignity and respect all health care patients deserve; and amplify the attractive, stigma‐busting reality that treatment is effective and recovery works.” Mishek, who is retiring at the end of June, and incoming President and CEO Joseph Lee, M.D., were among those at the groundbreaking event May 4, along with Hazelden Betty Ford Trustee Susan Ford Bales — daughter of President and Mrs. Ford — and special guests. “I am so heartened to know my mother's legacy and impact continue to grow,” Ford Bales said. “The Betty Ford Center is a special place to thousands of people already, and my mom would be thrilled to see our caring community open its arms to even more people.” The project, which is expected to be finished in 2025, will increase the bed count to 240 from 184, with many more slots for outpatient care. The campus will grow from 137,200 square feet to 170,000 square feet. The first phase of the project, approved by Rancho Mirage city officials last fall, includes construction of a new, one‐story, 22,748‐square‐foot Day Treatment Pavilion that will accommodate flexible treatment options for 44 patients and include offices for counselors; group rooms for treatment; and an auditorium for lectures, education and training. Phase 1 also includes updates to landscaping and parking spaces, as well as the development of a convenient, new entrance to the campus. The Betty Ford Center currently has four residential buildings with 20 beds each, plus a fifth 20‐bed building for medical stabilization and other services, as well as 84 sober living units on nearby Daisy Lane. Phase 2 of the expansion, planned to begin in 2023, will include removing two of the existing residential buildings and constructing a new two‐story, 20,935‐square‐foot residential pavilion with 46 beds. A second, similar residential treatment pavilion will be constructed in Phase 3 (2024), replacing the other two existing residential buildings.

Radical Love as Praxis

Ethnic studies is a growing movement for curricular and pedagogical practices that reclaim marginalized voices and histories and create spaces of healing for students of color; however, its application to mathematics education has been limited. In this essay, we provide a framework of five ethea of ethnic studies for mathematics education: identity, narratives, and agency; power and oppression; community and solidarity; resistance and liberation; and intersectionality and multiplicity. We describe key concepts and examples of the ethos of ethnic studies.