With two thirds of us experiencing mental health problems during our lifetimes, mental health awareness is as significant now as ever. This year’s Mental Health Awareness Week spans from the 14th to the 20th May and will place a particular emphasis upon stress and its contribution to a deterioration in someone’s mental health. Tackling stress will go a long way to reducing the number of people suffering from anxiety and depression. As well as focusing upon stress, Mental Health Awareness Week are promoting a ‘Curry and Chaat Night’ with the basic aim of getting people together to socialise and enjoy a curry, all whilst raising money for the Mental Health Foundation.

 

Stress and what causes it is something being analysed closely within the workplace sector as firms strive to improve upon their employees’ wellbeing. Wellness affects a company in many ways, there is a direct correlation between employee working conditions and productivity, creativity and in some cases, profitability. This means that it is imperative for firms to create comfortable working environments which support their workers and to create a space where they can reduce stress, rather than a place which is a source of stress.

 

Creating an environment which is comfortable and relaxing can greatly reduce the stress of people suffering or recovering from such difficulties, with a key part of someone’s surroundings being furniture. However, the influence of furniture upon someone’s recovery from mental health issues would be largely underestimated by most as the research and design process behind care home furniture will of course be conducted behind closed doors.

 

Knightsbridge Furniture are a Bradford based company who design and manufacture, innovative and bespoke British furniture for a variety of different sectors including the healthcare and care home industries. Recently they have provided Clock View Hospital in Liverpool, a part of the Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust with a wide variety of pieces for their hospital. These pieces include the Jilly Extreme, Jasmine Extreme and Thorpe Extreme for lounge areas as well as furniture for the dining areas including Hula Extreme Tables with Ascot Extreme Dining Chairs, Hula Extreme Dining Chairs and Slide Extreme Dining Chairs. These pieces have all been designed specifically with the safety and comfort of the hospital’s residents in mind and are tested in accordance with all British and European standards.

Numerous extreme features have been built in including non-retractable screws, reinforced metal frames, optional weighting and seamless upholstery to provide optimum comfort for the users. In addition to this, the furniture designed must be convenient for the facilities in which they are installed as well. A large proportion of the care home range by Knightsbridge Furniture are made using waterproof or easy clean materials to maintain a high level of cleanliness within the hospitals. The premise behind having heavily weighted and seamless furniture is partly for sturdiness but predominantly so that the pieces cannot be used to cause damage to a patient or others, with the lack of stitching making it more difficult to dismantle a product to be used for any ill means.