KO team presenting at NAHO conference along with their partners from the NRC and NOSM
Kerri Gibson (NRC), Heather Coulson (KOTM), and Susan O’Donnell (NRC) are in Ottawa to present their paper entitled "Telemental Health with Remote and Rural First Nations: Advantages, Disadvantages, and Ways Forward" at the National Aboriginal Health Organisation (NAHO) Conference. The conference is happening this week, November 24-27.
At the same conference, Robert Thomas, KO's Health Director is co-presenting with Dr. Bob Chaudhuri from the Northern Ontario Ontario School of Medicinet, about their work entitled "A Pilot Project for Mental Health Service Treatment Provision for Residential School Survivors". Their material is co-authored with Tom Terry from NOSM and Brian Walmark from KORI.
Abstract from the Telemental Health with Remote and Rural First Nations: Advantages, Disadvantages, and Ways Forward paper
Remote and rural First Nation communities have limited mental health services compared to urban communities yet their needs are similar and sometimes greater. Community members living in remote, isolated communities requiring mental health services are usually faced with two choices: having no service or leaving their community to access services in larger centres. Certain First Nation communities offer a third choice: using telemental health delivered via videoconferencing to provide clinical mental health services for community members. Like all technology uses, telemental health services have advantages and disadvantages, both for the individual and the community.
Understanding mental health workers’ experiences of telemental health and its benefits and drawbacks for remote and rural First Nations people was the focus of our study. Qualitative data were collected through interviews with mental health professionals (clinicians and nonclinicians) working with First Nations communities. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected from a national online survey of mental health workers working with clients in rural and remote First Nations. This paper presents a thematic analysis of the data collected. Advantages include allowing community members to remain within their community for treatment and connecting First Nations trauma survivors to each other; disadvantages include increased difficulty building and maintaining clinical relationships via videoconference and ethical concerns of using the technology. These and other pros and cons of using telemental health are discussed. Certain ways forward that seem promising are proposed, including incorporating traditional practices and the seven teachings into telemental health initiatives. Finally, policy recommendations are offered.
Click here for the PDF of the paper
From the A Pilot Project for Mental Health Service Treatment Provision for Residential School Survivors presentation
This study seeks to create new and different methods of treating First Nations people linking traditional Indigenous healing practices and western practices using a community mental health care delivery system as well as teleconferencing. It should be noted that teleconferencing is an antiquated term. In reality we mean videoconferencing (Internet Protocol IP)
The focus of this research is to investigate the successes and challenges by this new delivery system, which offers both Indigenous and Western forms of healing to clients in mental health service agencies, and to get descriptive information from their clients about success of such an approach.