International Journal of Emergency Mental Health and Human Resilience
Open Access

Abstract

Environmental psychology plays a vital role in the overall development of human health. Student activism and health concerns have arisen about the human health costs associated with a healthy built environment. This research focuses on recent design “trends”, active designs, and their relationship to environmental psychology and a healthy campus. This study examines the role of the active design approach in improving the environmental psychology of universities to achieve a healthy campus for students by hypothesising physical activity comprises three categories: physically active (body), mentally active (emotions), and socially active (group). The total number of student participants was 428 from ten university campuses. The methodology included a questionnaire survey with statistical analyses, ANOVA tests, and factor analyses. The results of this study reveal that students are more active outside campus than inside campus. Students are more interested in social activity than in mental and physical activities. In addition, the obstacles to students’ physical inactivity are a lack of time, lack of opportunities on campus, and the psychological feeling of anxiety, depression, and tension due to social activities and university work performances. In conclusion, a model is designed to demonstrate the relationship between environmental psychology and active design variables.

Biography

Sweyda Abdullah Azeez received the B.Sc. in architectural design from College of Engineering, Architectural department, Salahaddin University, Erbil (2012). The M.Sc. degree in architectural design from Salahaddin University ,Erbil, (2017). During working on research “Role of office layout typology in saving time and distance spent by users: Case of office buildings in Erbil city”. I discovered that architectural design indirectly effect on human psychology. I choose to pursue a PhD in this discipline, with an emphasis on active design, healthy built environments, and healthy behaviour. I decided to combine all healthy behavioural theories with an active design approach to create a model and published, which will assist researchers in enriching their work rather than simply using a strategy or checklist. The concept could be used in any field concerned with healthy behaviour. Later I decided to expand the idea on other aspect area such as psychology by combining environmental psychology and an active design approach to improve human health which became very successful.