Exploring socio-spatial encounters of people experiencing mental ill-health: A photovoice study

With the deinstitutionalisation of mental health care, individuals experiencing mental ill-health are increasingly expected to live as integrated members of the community. Yet, little is known about how they experience their everyday living environments. Situated within the post-deinstitutional paradigm, this article explores how individuals with mental ill-health navigate and make sense of their socio-spatial contexts in relation to ‘doing’ wellbeing. A Photovoice study was conducted with 12 participants (aged 26–66), recruited from three member-based Fountain Houses in Sweden. The study draws on a relational space perspective on wellbeing. Findings reveal that experiences of space and place are deeply relational, embodied, and situated—shaped by events and social interactions. These experiences cut across four categories of place: (i) enabling, (ii) troublesome, (iii) ambiguous, and (iv) places entangled with memories. We discuss how varying degrees of agency influence the emergence of wellbeing, particularly in the face of structural constraints such as poverty and regulation. Participants’ accounts also suggest that their environments resemble an “inverted city” rather than the prevailing urban planning ideal of a dense, vibrant, and inclusive city life. We conclude by emphasising the need to recognise how people, places, and policies are entangled in the practice of ‘doing’ wellbeing. to equally acknowledge how individuals’ realisation of a ‘livable life’ is supported by these spatial, material, social, and affective relations. Finally, we urge professionals in social and spatial fields to apply spatio-temporal insights in the pursuit of social inclusion - or wellbeing as a commons - not only for the group discussed here but for society as a whole. © 2026 The Authors.