Projects

New Project: “Gender, Recovery, and Housing: A Consultation with Service Providers in Multiple Communities”

Research into the ways in which gender intersects with housing and community participation for persons with severe mental illness is limited. Given the importance of these factors as social determinants of health there is a need to better articulate the barriers and opportunities associated with community integration in a manner that addresses the impacts of gender.

In this study a community consultation model will be used to capture the perspectives of housing and community mental health experts regarding how gender and other intersecting factors such as ethnicity and sexual identity impact the community integration of individuals with severe mental illness.

Key informant providers will be identified from one large city and one smaller city or town in each Canadian province to inquire, via phone interview, about their perspectives on these issues. The goal is to use this study to integrate a service provider perspective with the findings from the Centre’s recent literature review and an ongoing project (see below) by this theme group that is collecting lived experience perspectives.

This work will contribute to the establishment of a program of research that will provide evidence to inform the development of service and policy strategies that more effectively support the community participation of persons with mental illness in a manner sensitive and responsive to gender-specific factors.

Ongoing Project: “Using art-based research to create research spaces that encourage meaningful dialogue about gender, social inequity, recovery and mental illness”

The Recovery and Housing research team started their first seed grant project August 1, 2010.

The overarching research guiding this qualitative research study will be: As a women getting service from (name of service) or living in (name of housing or location) what is important in your life?  The specific objectives of this work are as follows: Hear the voices of women who live with mental illness and experience social marginalization; Understand the importance of and appreciate the richness and various experiences of moments, people, places, events, activities, and milestones in recovery from mental illness; Learn about recovery directly from women living with a mental illness; Advance experiential and creative methodologies for eliciting the voices of women living with mental health issues who experience social marginalization; and provide direction for future work to be completed by the Recovery and Housing theme group.

At the May 2011 Critical Inquiries Workshop the project team presented a project poster and handed out project pamphlets that contain the most up to date material currently available on this project.