Designing for Dignity: A Method to Explore Emotional Lived Experiences of Stigma and Dignity in Perinatal Mental Health Environments

Psychiatric care environments are intended to heal, yet their design is often experienced as stigmatizing and may undermine patients’ dignity. This study aims to uncover the meaning of dignity for perinatal women in psychiatric care, explore lived experiences of stigma and dignity, and identify how care features can be re-designed to uphold dignity. To address these, we developed the Uncovering and Designing for Dignity through Emotions (UDDE) method, a participatory approach using emotions as biological signals that can reveal when dignity is maintained or violated. The method consists of interconnected activities to visualize experiences and transform stigmatizing interactions into ones that better address what perinatal women in psychiatric care value and need. While dignity is often defined as an inherent worth every person possesses, in everyday life dignity is experienced as a lived value shaped by interactions with others and the environment. By bridging lived experiences and the abstract concept of dignity, the UDDE method provides a practical approach for studying and designing for dignity in healthcare environments.