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Mental health and urban design – zoning in on PTSD

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Abstract

The review firstly explores the relationship between mental health and urban design, pursuing the role of urban design in both health promotion and illness prevention against the mental illness epidemics, by conducting a comprehensive literature search; secondly, a systematic literature search is conducted to explore the relationship between urban design and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) specifically. Apparently, health in general and urban design do share a solid history, however, even though mental health/urban design relationship has been increasing over the past 20, they seem to share a weak historical relationship, and even recent research that tries to define links between the two is still preliminary. On the other hand, a gab in knowledge can be addressed regarding the relationship between PTSD and urban design.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Psychology, Western Sydney University, Sydney, Australia

    Majd A. Gharib

  2. Construction, Izhevsk State Technical University, 9 Yanvarya Street, 245, 25, Izhevsk, Udmurtia, Russian Federation, 426050

    Majd A. Gharib

  3. Architectural Engineering, Al-Baath University, Homs, Syria

    Majd A. Gharib

  4. Psychological Design and Schizophrenia Research Institute, Sydney, Australia

    Jan A. Golembiewski

  5. 1 Glenview Street, Paddington, NSW, 2021, Australia

    Jan A. Golembiewski

  6. Experimental Lab 2 (Room 24.LG.25), School of Social Sciences and Psychology, Marcs Institute for Brain and Behaviour, Western Sydney University, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Ahmed A. Moustafa

  7. Building 24, Bankstown Campus, Office: 24.1.6, Locked Bag 1797, Penrith, NSW, Australia

    Ahmed A. Moustafa

Authors
  1. Majd A. Gharib
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  2. Jan A. Golembiewski
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  3. Ahmed A. Moustafa
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Contributions

All authors together designed the outlines of the review and cooperated with each other at all stages; MG collected the data and wrote the first draft; JG and AM analyzed the data and made scientific and linguistic edits to the draft; MG wrote the paper with consultation of JG and AM; JG and AM refined the final product.

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Correspondence to Majd A. Gharib.

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This article does not contain any studies with human participants performed by any of the authors.

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Gharib, M.A., Golembiewski, J.A. & Moustafa, A.A. Mental health and urban design – zoning in on PTSD. Curr Psychol 39, 167–173 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-017-9746-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-017-9746-x

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