This qualitative descriptive study explores a parent’s sense of meaning and understanding in relation to the parenting of their children who are living with type 1diabetes. A collective case study design was used and ten interviews were conducted with parents of children living with type 1 diabetes. Recruitment took place through the Winnipeg Diabetes Education and Resource for Children and Adolescents and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. Nine categories are identified using qualitative content analysis and are interpreted according to an ecological framework (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). Data was triangulated through references to field notes and to the existing literature in this area. Implications regarding training and education for children and families have been discussed.

No description available.

The full experience of mental illness cannot be described in isolation from the context in which one lives, yet the internal physical manifestation of symptoms has been the focus of treatment in western cultures. The “recovery” paradigm is emerging as best-practice philosophy for mental health practice and represents a significant departure from existing standards thereby challenging mental health organizations to re-negotiate their relationship with the dominant bio-medical model. Despite the growing acceptance of recovery philosophy, literature exploring large-scale recovery-oriented organizational change is sparse. The purpose of this research was twofold; 1) to outline the steps taken by change agents within an organization embarking on recovery organizational change, and 2) to understand the experience, including successes and challenges associated with change. The qualitative data obtained from interviewing seventeen participants revealed the impact of organizational contextual factors, leadership and communication on recovery organizational change. Further, the data exposed the complexity of challenging preconceptions and practice when trying to adopt recovery approaches. The findings may guide other community based mental health organizations in their recovery journey.

This qualitative descriptive study explores a parent’s sense of meaning and understanding in relation to the parenting of their children who are living with type 1diabetes. A collective case study design was used and ten interviews were conducted with parents of children living with type 1 diabetes. Recruitment took place through the Winnipeg Diabetes Education and Resource for Children and Adolescents and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. Nine categories are identified using qualitative content analysis and are interpreted according to an ecological framework (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). Data was triangulated through references to field notes and to the existing literature in this area. Implications regarding training and education for children and families have been discussed.

Baron's work has not been extensively studied nor is it known in full. Critical writings and scholarly attention have focused on the work as representative of Holocaust suffering. This thesis intervenes in that assumption by arguing that it is possible to understand Baron's processes of making collage as a significant case study in the problematic of signification and a complex of differences none of which are reducible to or deducible from each other. Drawing together a range of biographical information, primary source material and close readings of many of Baron's collages (including two hitherto unseen series) traces are revealed of both a maker, an artistic subject finding itself in its own practice, and a making, in the sense of a process that cannot be bound into the singularity of the subject who made it. A framework is established using psychoanalytic theory and second generation Holocaust theory that allows for the possibility of reading into Baron's life story both the symptoms of unresolved conflicts and a particular set of strategies that enabled her to sustain a creative subjectivity. Kristeva's formulation of art as an imaginaire du pardon permits a reading, however tentative, of Baron's art in terms of a poetics of imaginary restoration and reparation in which archaic and traumatic-affects are given the structure of symbolic representation. This is especially pertinent to Baron's fourteen year experience of cancer. Finally, a consideration of Baron's collage making as a process of inscription that is in relation to the body as a coalition of history, memory, corporeality and the psyche is not only significant to contemporary understandings of identity and subjectivity, but also makes it possible to propose an ethical dimension concerned with a feminine understanding of difference.

No description available.

Female offenders’ experiences within the criminal justice system and the way in which they become involved with the criminal justice system are very different than that of male offenders. Previous research that has been conducted on female offending does show that womens’ contact with the criminal justice system can often be related to histories of abuse and to mental illness, and that these can also be related to subsequent re-contacts with the criminal justice system. Abuse, mental illness and gender, along with control variables (age, aboriginal identity, LSI-OR score), were investigated in a sample of 522 male and female Ontario Provincial offenders. When males and females were compared at the bivariate level using a chi-square comparison, females were found to be significantly more likely to re-contact. Abuse and mental illness were not found on their own to be significantly related to re-contact, but when the relationship between the three variables was examined, mental illness was found to be both significant and positively correlated to both gender and abuse. Examination into the relationship between the variables found a strong relationship between gender and abuse, gender and mental illness, mental illness and abuse as well as strong relationship in the three way interaction between gender, mental illness and abuse. The cross tabulation demonstrated that women who had experienced abuse were identified as being much more likely to be suffering from a mental illness. Logistic regression was used to model the relationship between re-contact, gender, abuse and the risk for re-contact. All possible interactions (as noted above) were included in the model, but the model that best fit the data included only the controls (age, aboriginal identity, LSI-OR score), gender, abuse, mental illness and the interaction between mental illness and gender. Results indicated that there was a significantly higherrisk for re-contact for females with mental illness, compared with men with mental illness or or to men and women without mental illness.. Even though abuse as a single variable or as part of an interaction was not found to be significantly related to re-contact, it is still of importance to note that the chi-square comparisons demonstrated that abuse is significantly related to gender and mental illness, therefore the relationship was still important when looking at the implications of the research. It is recommended that future research further investigate the different needs of male and female offenders and the role that experienced physical, sexual and emotional abuse, mental illness and gender plays in not only offending behaviour, but in the treatment and rehabilitation of offenders within the provincial correctional system.

Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philisophy (PhD) / This thesis examines the experiences of parents (both mothers and fathers) with mental illness. Following a tradition of sociology, this thesis is guided by the concepts of ‘generosity’ from Frank and ‘stigma’ from Goffman and ‘risk’ from Lupton. The thesis has gathered data from three sources. In-depth interviews with parents with mental illness are explored to gain an insight into their lived experiences of parenthood and mental illness. The national and state mental health policies on mental illness are analysed in order to assess their applicability to support services for parents with mental illness. The submissions to the Senate Select Committee Inquiry on Mental Health (2006) are also analysed to gain further information about the experiences of parents with mental illness based on a small number of submissions relating to their perspectives. Analysis of the data collected and assimilated in this thesis provides a clear picture of the troubled terrain faced by parents with mental illness. The narratives from the interviews reveal stories of long-term mental health issues for parents with mental illness whose parenting role is largely unsupported. Analysis of this data provides a greater understanding of how parents negotiate their parenting role within the context of socially prescribed notions, limited agency, and limited capacity due to a lack of support services for parents with mental illness. Analysis of mental health policies highlights the disparity between policy and practice. Whilst national mental health policies are now in place, parenthood continues to be overlooked through the continued medicalisation of people with mental illness, and policies that operate under an individualist and economic rationalist discourse.The motivation for this research was to elicit increased understanding and insight into how parental mental illness affects experiences of parenthood. This thesis focuses upon lived experience, social processes, and social policies relating to parents with mental illness. The specific contribution of this research to the sociology of mental health is that it documents for the first time parenthood as lived by parents with mental illness. Finally, it offers theories as to how the gaps in policies and services can be filled to support the ‘silent’ parents whose parenthood is so often unacknowledged the lack of attention paid to their mental illness.

No description available.

This thesis contains two parts: a novella, Plum Sickness and a critical essay, Wrestling the Blue Cactus: grappling for meaning through story and the self: writing depressive illness. The novella tells a story of Judith Black, a young woman with depressive illness. It begins with her admission to hospital after a suicide attempt, then goes back in time to explore her relationships with her lover Michael, and her parents John and Aileen Black. There are fantasy passages showing her attempts to deal with negative attitudes to mental illness as well as the illness itself. The critical essay is a deliberate effort to explore the various influences on my approach to the writing of depressive illness without referring to any personal illness experience of my own, and without making detailed reference to Plum Sickness. I wanted to write a piece that could stand on its own, as well as an accompaniment to the novella, and I kept the depressed person in mind as my reader. The essay begins with particular medical writings, is followed by memoir, Anne Sexton's poetry, Virginia Woolf, The Imitation of Christ, self-help literature, and finishes with self-representation in fiction and an exploration of storytelling through The Blank Page by Isak Dinesen.