Etiquette and necessity cross paths when you go out to buy furniture for a behavioral health facility. Behavioral disorders could mean that the patients in your facility may all have completely different personalities and concurrent needs. To satisfy the needs of different patients, there are certain things you need to consider.

The most important among them are ensuring safety, promoting healing, and providing personal space.

Nicole Groshek from National Business Furniture writes about these things and more to help you choose the right furniture for your healthcare facility.

Choosing the Right Behavioral Health Furniture

If youre outfitting a behavioral health facility with new furniture, youve got a lot of factors to take into consideration, and theyre all important. The challenge of furnishing this type of healthcare facility is that youll need to somehow accommodate individuals with vastly different needs from one another due to the great range in mental illnesses that behavioral health facilities treat. Heres what you absolutely must consider before selecting your new furniture.

Ensure Safety
The number one most important consideration when it comes to selecting behavioral health furniture is patient and caregiver safety. Avoid providing any opportunity for patients to harm caregivers, other patients or themselves. This applies to every facet of your facility. For example, fasteners should be tamper-resistant, and there should be no exposed staples or other catch points on any furniture items. Eliminate the possibility for stashed contraband by providing no concealment points in chairs or other furniture. There should also be no ligature points made available to any patient, which means that chairs should be armless or have closed arm panels, and cabinets and doors should be fitted with breakaway hooks and hinges. When it comes to freestanding chairs, sled base models are often preferred as they are harder to weaponize. Ensure that you equip your facility with absolutely no furniture that has removable parts, and outfit patient rooms with open shelving rather than cabinets with drawers and doors. Windows should be outfitted with unbreakable glass.

Promote Emotional Healing. The second most important factor to consider is that youll want to create an atmosphere wherein patients feel a sense of control. Remember, the goal is to make patients feel like they are working toward recovery, and they will never get that sense without first having a sense of freedom. Try to achieve the look of a traditional healthcare facility rather than a correctional institution by incorporating peaceful nature scenes on the walls and soft, inviting colors in your furniture. Residents should be able to move furniture, but they should not be able to pick furniture up. Due to this, behavioral health furniture is usually weighed down significantly, and it may be bolted to the floor in areas such as a cool down room where the chances of a lash out are particularly high. Every room in your facility should feel warm and inviting, and patients should have access to natural light in individual rooms and common areas.

Provide Personal Space. Residents in a behavioral health facility need more personal space than individuals in the average healthcare facility. Chairs in any seating area should be able to be moved apart, meaning that ganged seating is okay, but it’s recommended to use tables as spacers to that nobody feels crowded. Space should also be built in between all seating areas and tables so that residents have the choice to sit alone if they so choose.

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Corner desks come in all shapes and sizes. They can come in the form of a mundane rectangular shape or they can be custom formed to fit flush against a corner. The main thing is that they are desks that help maximize the space in your office.

Regular corner desks are perfect for people working with administrative tasks who dont have to interact with external customers. These corner desks are oftentimes almost similar to a regular desk, except that they can fit flush against the corner, thereby, maximizing any available space in your office.

L Shaped corner desks are perfect for those who have to work with more equipment or basically need enough space to spread out what theyre working with. These corner desks can also be used as central command areas as the extended amount of surface area allows for more items to be placed on top. This is where you can place your fax machines, photocopiers, public access computers and other office equipment on.

Small rounded corner desks are perfect if you aim to place small items on top of their surface area and not necessarily as a work desk. These are best situated near entrances as the round corners prevent anyone from seriously hurting themselves if they accidentally bump into these.

Large rounded corner desks work as impromptu meeting areas as the rounded shape allows for a seemingly equal stance for everyone gathered around the table. These corner desks are usually larger and have enough surface area to sit anywhere between 2 to 5 people at one time.

Corner desks with stacked shelves are also available to provide more space to either fill forms or place equipment in their proper places. Aside from improving the functionality of your office, the desk can also make the entire area look more organized.

Custom fit corner desks are probably the best type of corner desks out there as they can come in any form or shape that you like and thats not even mentioning the fact that the shape they do come in is meant to maximize the space within your office in the most efficient manner!

When it comes to color, there is no limit on what works best for your office. Some people like to mix and match the furniture they have in their workspaces. As a basic rule of thumb, if youre working in the conservative profession niche, go for natural wood or basic solid colours. Keep it within the black to dark brown colour scheme and you wont have any customers raising their eyebrows.

For people in the creative field, there is no limit in sight for the range of colors you can use for your corner desks. You can have natural looking wood finishes or something as wild as a purple corner desk against a green wall!

If youre looking to fill up that office space with desks, try to go with corner desks first and make sure to get the one, which truly fits the space you have available.