Taking aim at social inequities and mental health
Simon Fraser University’s centre for the study of gender, social inequities and mental health is one of three new national centres that will study issues ranging from unequal access to services for the mentally ill to violence prevention.
The centre will focus on several key areas, including mental health reform; recovery and housing, reproductive mental health; violence, mental health and substance abuse; and the criminal justice system, mental health and substance use.
Led by SFU health sciences professors Marina Morrow and Eliott Goldner and the Mental Health Commission of Canada’s Howard Chodos, the centre’s research team is investigating such issues as how gender and social inequities contribute to and exacerbate the experiences of people with mental health and substance use problems.
The centre is being funded by a $2 million grant from the Canadian Institutes for Health Research and has plans for an official launch and two day workshop in June. It will also co-sponsor (with the Institute for Critical Studies in Gender and Health) an international dialogue on health inequities in March.
Researchers hope to better understand why there is unequal access to services and health outcomes for people with mental illness and substance-use problems. They will also help develop programs, policies and interventions with the aim of resolving such issues and improving mental health in Canada and abroad.
Morrow, a community psychologist, specializes in research related to gender and mental health reform and social inequities. “Although there is a recognition of the importance of the social determinants of mental health, very little concentrated effort has been made to explore new ways of understanding and addressing social and structural inequities in this area,” she says.
In addition to developing research activities, a scoping review of the mental health literature is underway to examine how social inequities have been considered to date within the field of mental health.
The announcement of a total of $6 million in CIHR funding for the three new centres (the others are at the University of Ottawa and McMaster University) was made today at a national roundtable of leading Canadian researchers on violence, gender and health.
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