Modest attachments: An inquiry into the potentialities of material spaces in a psychiatric day care centre

Institutional care buildings have been largely transformed as the psychiatric field has undergone significant changes over the last fifty years. Instead of the disciplining spaces of hospitals, teams of caregivers now work in smaller centres located in the community. This thesis brings the reader into one of these places, a psychiatric day care centre for teenagers in Brussels. It dives into the details of its everyday material arrangements, and asks, How do material spaces work in the everyday practice of a psychiatric centre? How do they contribute to institutional care? What are their potentialities, with their tensions, successes, and failures? Presented over seven chapters, the dissertation describes how these spaces help make modest attachments emerge. ‘Modest attachments’ proliferate as caregivers attempt to spark even the smallest appreciations by mediation of the material environment. Material spaces play active roles in enacting various ways of becoming attached, from small affinities in the everyday flow, towards appreciations that become of great concern. The thesis witnesses the potentialities of these material spaces for such modest attachments and shows how these significantly contribute to the care work