Reworking therapeutic landscapes: The spatiality of an ‘alternative’ self-help group

Abstract

Since Gesler first introduced the concept in 1992, the language of 'therapeutic landscapes' has attained a core position in the toolkit of health/place studies. Whilst many authors using the term acknowledge that therapeutic landscapes are often also spaces of contestation, few if any have extended this to incorporate a serious critique of therapy itself. In this article, I use the case study of an 'alternative' psychiatric survivor (self-help) group in the north of England to attempt just this. Based on a ten month period of ethnography, I engage with the spaces - meeting places and venues - occupied by the group, focusing on the dilapidated and reputedly dangerous city park where the group hosts its most regular meetings. Three qualities of these spaces were found to be particularly embraced by the group: spaces of agency and appropriation; a space in the world; and a non-technical relation with space. The article uses these three themes to explore how the unconventional spaces of the group are not mere products of marginality but a serious aspect of mobilising the dissident and 'anti-psychiatric' recovery sought by its members. Through attending to what the survivors' found helpful in the park, a more sensitive rendition of 'anti-psychiatry' as it relates to the group is developed. The therapeutic landscapes framework as put forward by Gesler retains currency in highlighting the importance of place to the processes and identity of the group. However, it is also suggested that the 'dissident topophilias' of the survivors express a critique of current therapeutic landscapes thinking, challenging the supposition that it is the planned, the pleasant and the professional that provide the best backdrops for recovery.

Placing care in times of austerity

“…Support is thus being re-framed from 'care' in care settings towards enabling meaningful lives within local neighbourhoods and mainstream community settings. Geographers are becoming more attuned to the relations of care which are taking place within a growing myriad of 'ordinary' spaces of care including cafes (Warner, Talbot, & Bennison, 2013), parks (Laws, 2009), community gardens (Milligan, Gatrell, & Bingley, 2004) and arts spaces (Hall, 2013;Parr, 2008), where innovative and progressive forms of caring can emerge (Hall & McGarrol, 2013). Deverteuil (2016) argues that these innovative spaces and practices of care are a political and spatial form of resistance and creativity in the face of neoliberal driven gentrification and austerity.…”

Therapeutic landscapes and non-human animals: the roles and contested positions of animals within care farming assemblages

“…Therapeutic spaces are neither constant nor stable, impacted by a variety of factors and relations: wider social, economic and political factors (Gesler 1998), a person's mood (Laws 2009), media attitudes towards specific place types and sensationalist news stories (Milligan 2007), even changing seasonally and diurnally (Collins and Kearns 2007). However, one set of relations yet to be discussed within the context of therapeutic landscapes is the non-human element of these spaces, despite the growing popularity of multispecies scholarship (Wilkie and McKinnon 2013).…”

Orchestrating home

“…Individual settings may be therapeutic or detrimental depending on the person's relationship with the particular site, the others present, and the objects that occupy the space (Conradson 2005;Donovan and Williams 2007;Milligan and Bingley 2007;Wakefield and McMullan 2005). This relational aspect of therapeutic landscapes means that they are actively produced through their physical design (see for example Curtis et al 2007;Wood et al 2013), discursive construction (for example, Hoyez 2007), and/or situated activities and practices (see for example Dyck and Dossa 2007;Laws 2009). How these social processes interact with the physical, social, affective, or symbolic properties of a place dictates whether or not the place is experienced as a therapeutic landscape (Conradson 2005;English et al 2008;Martin et al 2005).…”