Archiatric: Federico Babina’s Mental Health Conditions as Houses

Archiatric is a series of sixteen drawings by the Italian illustrator Federico Babina, who imagined what mental health conditions might look like if each one were a house. Every picture uses the same simple outline, a pitched roof sitting on a single ground line, and then changes that outline to suggest how a particular condition can feel from the inside: chained shut, split in two, dissolving, bristling with spikes.

The series appeared in early 2017 together with a short animation, and it spread widely on design and architecture sites. Its appeal is easy to see. A house is the most familiar shape we know, so when it cracks, drips or turns into a maze, the change lands instantly. Babina, who works from Barcelona and often blends architecture with illustration, has said he saw the project as translating one language into another.

Below you will find the animation, all sixteen images grouped by theme, and a short note on each condition so the pictures can be read with some real background. The drawings are metaphors, not diagnostic tools, and several of the labels belong to very different categories, which we explain along the way.

The idea behind Archiatric

Babina’s wider body of work keeps returning to buildings as a way of describing people. Earlier series in the same spirit turned artists, film directors and musicians into imaginary architecture. In Archiatric he points the method inward, at states of mind.

Speaking to the design magazine Indesignlive, he linked the idea to how spaces shape us, and he was careful about tone. “I don’t want to put a romantic aura around the discomfort and suffering of mental illness,” he said. That caution is worth keeping in mind: the images are elegant, but the experiences behind them are often painful and disabling.

The animation runs through the series and gives each house a little movement, which helps the metaphors read more clearly than the still images alone.

More of his work can be found on his official website, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Mood, fear and sleep

Anxiety

A solid black house is wrapped in heavy chains and tangles of scribbled wire, while a tiny figure stands in a narrow doorway at the top of a staircase. The image captures how anxiety can make ordinary life feel locked down and over-guarded. Anxiety disorders are among the most common mental health conditions worldwide, and they are distinct from the everyday worry everyone feels before an exam or a job interview.

Depression

Black liquid drips from the roof and walls, pooling around a hollowed-out room where a small figure sits alone. The heaviness and slow leaking suggest how depression can drain energy and colour from a home that looks normal from a distance. Clinical depression is more than sadness: it lasts weeks or longer and affects sleep, appetite, concentration and interest in life.

Bipolar

The house is cut vertically into two halves: one side solid and dark, the other filled with restless looping lines. It is a direct picture of the swings between low, depressive periods and high-energy manic or hypomanic periods that define bipolar disorder. Episodes can last days to months, and many people have long stable stretches in between.

Phobias

Spikes cover the entire outside of the house, and a small figure peers out of the only door. A phobia is an intense, persistent fear of a specific thing or situation, such as heights, flying or spiders, that is out of proportion to the real danger. The spikes suggest both the threat a person perceives and the defensive barrier that keeps the world at a distance.

Insomnia

An hourglass is carved straight through the building, with sand pouring from top to bottom. Anyone who has lain awake watching the clock will recognise the idea. Insomnia means persistent trouble falling asleep, staying asleep or waking too early, and it often travels with anxiety or depression rather than appearing alone.

Memory and the slow loss of a home

Dementia

One side of the house breaks apart into loose grey blocks, and a little figure stands on a ledge among the gaps. The drawing suggests a structure losing pieces of itself one at a time. Dementia is not a single disease but a term for a decline in memory, thinking and everyday functioning caused by various conditions that damage the brain. The World Health Organization estimated that 57 million people were living with dementia in 2021.

Alzheimer’s disease

Here the roof is only a thin outline, a crack runs across the walls and the lower half sinks into darkness. It reads like a memory that fades from the top down. Alzheimer’s disease is the most common cause of dementia, which is why it sits naturally beside the previous image; the WHO says it may contribute to 60 to 70 per cent of cases.

Thoughts, perception and the sense of self

Schizophrenia

The house is shattered into angular fragments crossed by bright lines, with a small figure clinging to one edge. The broken geometry hints at how psychosis can disrupt the connection between thoughts, perceptions and reality. Schizophrenia can involve hallucinations, delusions and disorganised thinking; it does not mean having a “split personality,” which is one of the most persistent myths about it.

Paranoia

A maze of tight, winding lines fills the façade like a giant fingerprint, and a tiny figure is lost somewhere inside. Paranoia is a pattern of suspicious, often unfounded thoughts that others mean harm. It is a symptom that can appear in several conditions, from psychotic disorders to extreme stress, rather than a diagnosis on its own.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)

Every inch of the front is covered in the same chevron pattern, repeated with perfect precision, with a tiny figure at the base. It points to the urge for order, but OCD is much more than liking things tidy. It involves intrusive, unwanted thoughts and repetitive behaviours or mental rituals that a person feels driven to perform, often at a real cost in time and distress.

Dissociative disorders

Several translucent house shapes are layered and slightly rotated, so the outline never settles into one clear form. Dissociation describes a disconnection from thoughts, memories, surroundings or one’s sense of identity. Mild versions, like zoning out on a familiar drive, are common; dissociative disorders are more severe and are often linked to trauma.

Neurodevelopment and learning

Autism

Concentric outlines of the house nest inward toward a small, bright house in the centre. Many viewers read it as an inner world that is rich and detailed but not always easy for others to reach. Autism is a lifelong neurodevelopmental difference affecting communication, social interaction and sensory experience, and many autistic people see it as part of who they are rather than an illness to be cured.

Dyslexia

Blocks of jumbled text are pasted across the house at odd angles, with a small figure standing below them. Dyslexia is a specific learning difficulty that mainly affects reading, spelling and processing written words. It is not a mental illness and says nothing about intelligence, which is a good example of why the series groups together experiences that clinicians would place in very different categories.

Body, sleep and identity

Eating disorders

A bite has been taken out of the side of the house, small figures stand on the broken edge and a round window is closed with a zip. Eating disorders such as anorexia, bulimia and binge eating disorder are serious illnesses that involve far more than food, often bound up with control, anxiety and self-image. They can affect people of any body size, gender or age.

Narcolepsy

Inside the house, bars of light fall through slats onto a lone figure, as if the room drifts between waking and dreaming. Narcolepsy is a long-term neurological sleep disorder that causes overwhelming daytime sleepiness and sudden sleep attacks; some people also experience cataplexy, a brief loss of muscle control triggered by strong emotion. Like dyslexia, it is not a psychiatric condition, though it can be badly misunderstood.

Gender image, shown under a historical label

The façade is lined with rows of identical narrow windows, with a single round window breaking the pattern. Babina titled this panel “Gender Disorder,” a phrase that reflects older psychiatric language. The American Psychiatric Association replaced “gender identity disorder” with “gender dysphoria” in the DSM-5 in 2013, focusing on distress rather than identity itself, and the WHO’s ICD-11 moved “gender incongruence” out of the mental disorders chapter altogether. Being transgender is not a mental illness.

How to look at the series

Archiatric works best as a conversation starter. Its sixteen panels mix common mental health conditions, neurological disorders, a learning difficulty and a neurodevelopmental difference, so it should not be read as a medical list. What the houses share is a feeling: that something private and invisible has been given a shape other people can see.

That is also the real strength of art about mental health. A picture can help someone say “this is what it is like for me” when words fail, and it can make friends and family more curious and less judgmental. If any of these images feel uncomfortably familiar, talk to a doctor or a mental health professional; support exists, and many of these conditions respond well to treatment.

Sources: Artwork and animation by Federico Babina; Indesignlive: Archiatric; Collater.al: Federico Babina’s Archiatric; World Health Organization: Dementia fact sheet; Wikipedia: Gender dysphoria; first shared via Bored Panda.