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GGT with Rummie would be interesting. Not too long ago, I was in a psychiatric group's waiting room that was being remodeled. It had a huge focal wall picture hung crookedly. After a while I went over to straighten it, but it was bolted to the wall that way (hotels do that, too)! Someone in the room chuckled.
By the time I made it into his office, I felt compelled to talk about the environment of their waiting room, and also his office. He'd changed the wall color from a beige-yellow to an orangey-yellow. He'd changed a shapely urn ceramic lamp (a patient broke it) to a cold rigid metal thing. I noticed it right away. Apparently I was the first to say so....and to tell him it was unsettling. I asked him why he'd pick a red yellow for a
psychiatrist's office.....and he said, "I like yellow, it's warm and mellow. The other option was white but I was told that's too sterile."
I said sure, you spend your day here, but what about how color affects your patients' moods? Maybe that's why a patient broke your lamp? He got a kick out of me "analyzing" all this. Why his chair was leather-on-rollers positioned at task height behind the desk, but my chair was crappy fabric with plastic arms, and set at conversational height? It forces the patient to "look up" into his eyes, putting the big dark desk between us felt like another obstacle. His bookcases were filled with 'prop' books, some random objects and fake plants. The windows had metal blinds but no curtains. Nothing soft or comforting or "homey" in the whole place. And the furniture was kinda shoved on one side of the room, around his desk.
He agreed he could
probably use a professional interior designer who knew how to arrange the place as a
mental health space. But he was more of a pharmaceutical-psychiatrist, doing 15 minute Med Check appointments. He didn't really give a shit.
Oh yeah, and he also had only one tiny box of standard-issue hospital Kleenex, the kind that feels like raw paper and falls apart with any moisture. The only garbage can was behind his desk. The guy was very clueless about people's needs. How very odd for a psychiatrist.