PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Steven D Brown
AU  - Paula Reavey
TI  - Vital spaces and mental health
AID  - 10.1136/medhum-2018-011609
DP  - 2019 Jun 01
TA  - Medical Humanities
PG  - 131--140
VI  - 45
IP  - 2
4099  - http://mh.bmj.com/content/45/2/131.short
4100  - http://mh.bmj.com/content/45/2/131.full
SO  - J Med Humanit2019 Jun 01; 45
AB  - The impact of social and material conditions on mental health is well established but lacking in a coherent approach. We offer the concept of ‘vitality’ as means of describing how environments facilitate ‘feelings of being alive’ that cut across existing diagnostic categories. Drawing on the work of Stern, Fuchs, Worms and Duff, we argue that vitality is not solely a quality of an individual body, but rather emerges from attunements and resonances between bodies and materials. We use vitality as a lens to explore how movements within and between assembled sets of relations can facilitate or disable feelings and expressions of being alive. Building on extended discussions of both inpatient and community-based mental healthcare, we sketch out a research agenda for analysing ‘vital spaces’.