Tuesday, May 31, 2005

Research Project on Deaths by Suicide in New Brunswick (Canada) A report (36 pages, Adobe Acrobat format) on suicides in New Brunswick in 2002 and 2003 - "Death by suicide is a major cause of mortality in New Brunswick, and it is more prevalent among adult males. With that in mind, it becomes important to be able to identify the factors that could contribute to suicide. The Department of Health and Wellness therefore conducted a study of suicide victims in collaboration with Chief Coroner Dianne Kelly and researchers associated with the McGill Group for Suicide Studies and the Centre de recherche Fernand- Seguin, including Monique Séguin, Ph.D., Gustavo Turecki, MD, Ph.D., and Alain Lesage, MD. The purpose was to identify the personal and social circumstances that led a number of New Brunswickers to commit suicide so as to propose strategies for improving the services offered to suicidal individuals and their families. Our research methodology involved 1) charting the development of mental health problems, determining the sequence in which the initial difficulties appeared, and tracking their evolution over time; 2) surveying the accumulation of psychosocial risk factors and developmental factors; 3) tracing the trajectory of help seeking and use of health services; and 4) assessing the response to service needs."  
  

Mental Health and Police Project: Fact Sheet Series (Canada) This series from CMHA-British Columbia (called to our attention in CMHA-Ontario's newsletter Mental Health Notes) were developed as part of the Building Capacity: Mental Health and Police Project. The goal of the project is "to improve interactions between police, emergency services, and people with mental illness" and the fact sheets include Police and Mental Illness: Increased Interactions; Criminalization of Mental Illness; Violence and Mental Illness: Unpacking the Myths;  Police and Mental Illness: Models that Work;  Hallucinations and Delusions: How to Respond; Mental Illness and Substance Use Disorders: Key Issues; and Suicidal Behaviour: How to Respond. The link above leads to a page indexing the individual fact sheets, and the full set is also available as an Adobe Acrobat document.   
  

Housing and Mental Health (Canada) The current issue of Networks (Adobe Acrobat format, 24 pages), published by CMHA-Ontario, focuses on mental health, homelessness and housing. The issue includes several first person accounts, articles on CMHA-Ontario housing programs, the "Report Card on Homelessness in Ottawa," a profile of Houselink and Homecoming ("'a very fluid coalition' of organizations and individuals who share their expertise as lawyers, planners, and other professionals with an interest in social housing issues"), housing issues in rural areas and other issues. The link above is to the Acrobat version of the entire issue, and individual articles are also available in HTML format from an index page.