Search results

The increasing global need for mental health care has led to a search for efficient, effective treatments that are based on both local cultural healing traditions and scientific evidence. In this article, I describe the development of a brief, culturally responsive, transdiagnostic approach to psychotherapy for common mental disorders in Bhutan, a rapidly changing culture firmly grounded in Vajrayana Buddhism. Buddhist-Informed Therapy for Bhutan (BT-B) supports Bhutan's goals of preserving traditional culture, improving psychological well-being for its citizens, and integrating Buddhism into solutions for contemporary social issues. More broadly, BT-B extends the range of culturally responsive treatment approaches in several ways. First, BT-B is innovative in its identification and therapeutic use of conceptual links between specific Western evidence-based principles of therapeutic change and core Buddhist principles. Listening empathically to the client's narrative, the therapist identifies an evidence-based principle to address and uses conceptually linked deeply rooted Buddhist beliefs to guide the client in applying their own cultural wisdom to resolve problems. Second, the model illustrates the value of an ecological approach to culturally responsive treatment development that takes into account local cultural beliefs, practices, and institutions, including those that shape health care delivery and use. Third, evidence from case examples adds to the growing body of literature that supports the utility of transdiagnostic therapeutic approaches across cultures and in settings where resources are limited.

Post-war social housing estates are commonly problematised as socially and spatially segregated places in European cities. Physical transformations – often framed as 'upgrading' – are considered to stimulate better social and spatial integration: many estates are being 'opened up' by converting open spaces into public spaces, other estates are being densified to achieve a better social mix. In these transformations, social housing's designed landscapes play a central role, but often with no awareness of their inherited socio-material qualities. This paper makes a case for reappraising the heritage of open spaces in post-war social housing as welfare landscapes to inform current debates, policies and practices regarding social housing and future heritage making in its renewal. We look back at the development processes of three paradigmatic Danish estates which literally materialised the emerging welfare state by concrete, asphalt, plantings and earthworks. Guided by actor-network theory we recount how their welfare landscapes materialised as socio-material assemblages. We show that non-human things played a crucial role in the development of welfare landscapes which focused on child welfare and community development, offered architectural and ecological diversity, and co-shaped the urban landscape beyond the individual estates. Understanding welfare landscapes as socio-material assemblages does not only acknowledge the role of non-human things in their historical production. Ultimately it also calls for the inclusion of the welfare of non-human species and may offer inspiration for developing future welfare landscapes for more than humans.

Based on a Danish case, this paper investigates how strategic urban and landscape design can contribute to positive developments in rural areas that are challenged by population decline. From 2007–2012, the municipality of Bornholm conducted a strategic planning process, which aimed to enhance quality of life by strengthening place-based qualities and potential through local physical projects. Guided by actor-network theory (ANT) we analyse the socio-material effects of the new assemblages of people and things around the design interventions that were made. We find that strategic spatial projects can contribute considerably to quality of life in declining rural areas. From a wider strategic perspective, they can also define new spatial development perspectives rooted in place-based resources and potential. Methodologically, ANT offers a pertinent framework for studying the long-term performance of strategic spatial projects and how design actions can continue to gather new actors, spark new initiatives and, thereby, fuel repercussive effects.

In a time of increasing globalisation and urbanisation, shrinking peripheral rural areas have become a truly wicked planning problem in many European countries. Although a problem can be easily perceived and measured by various indicators, the precise definition of the problem is problematic. Based on the case of a Danish planning process which was carried out in collaboration with a charitable trust, this paper discusses an emerging strategic planning approach at the municipal level. We use the concept of wicked problems, strategic planning theory and Actor-Network-Theory to study a collaborative, place-based and project-oriented process directed at concrete physical outcomes. We frame strategic planning as a translation process where the interaction between human and non-human actors translates a unique, complex and contested situation into an innovated situation. We find that local physical projects played a major role in this process. First, they acted as a vehicle that assembled planners, politicians and stakeholders to work towards strategic visions across multiple scales. Second and consequently, they stimulated considerable second and third order effects in the form of shared problem-understandings, increased social capital, and follow-up projects initiated beyond the actual planning process. We conclude that local physical projects, when conceived in a collaborative and strategic manner, can contribute to sustainable adaptation to rural shrinkage.

The 2020 World Happiness Report suggests that rural residents in Northern and Western Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand are generally happier than their urban counterparts. Similar findings have been reported in country-level studies and broader regional research, especially in Europe. Such findings go against conventional wisdom in the field and represent something of a conundrum to researchers and policymakers alike: the rural–urban happiness paradox. Is quality of life really better in the countryside? How and under which circumstances is this the case? Did influential writers like Edward Glaeser get it all wrong when suggesting that the city had now triumphed? What can we learn from digging deeper in the rural–urban happiness paradox and which critical questions does this leave us with for the future? What might policymakers, planners, architects and other influential actors learn from such an exercise? The purpose of the proposed book is to delve deeper into these matters by asking what quality of life in rural areas is actually all about. Since 2018 a cross-disciplinary team of researchers from four research environments at three Danish universities has been carrying out an ambitious research project to do just that. In this edited volume their findings are presented alongside chapters written by specially commissioned international authors from across Europe, North America, Asia and Africa.