Grant: Fellowship - PA: First Nations, Inuit and/or Métis Health

More and more people with mental illness in Canada find themselves in prison rather than in facilities where they can get appropriate help. Most Canadians are troubled by this fact, but balancing the need to help these offenders with the need to uphold justice and keep communities safe is difficult. In recent decades, mental health programs for criminal courts have sprung up in Canadian cities and elsewhere to answer this challenge. These programs offer health care alternatives to jail and other criminal sanctions for offenders with mental illness. Yet, in remote, mainly Inuit communities in the Canadian Arctic, these programs do not exist, and Inuit who commit crimes for which mental illness is the cause are prosecuted. This post-doctoral study is the first research to directly address this problem. The study explores how theoretical principles that guide programs to help people with mental illness in conflict with the law in southern cities can be practically applied (through health policies, health systems delivery and clinical practice) in remote, mainly Inuit Arctic communities without resources usually associated with these programs. The two-year study builds on earlier doctoral work by exploring these policies, systems and practices through a consensus generating research method known as a Delphi approach involving local and Inuit practitioners, experts and policy makers who work in health and law in the Arctic. The research is informed by the investigator's years of experience as a criminal prosecutor in Nunavut and Ontario and by her doctoral expertise in health sciences exploring the nexus of mental health rehabilitation and criminal law in Inuit communities. This study will have a major impact on the mental health of Inuit facing multiple disadvantages in the Arctic territory of Nunavut and will help the territory keep more people with mental illness out of jail.