Grant: Doctoral Award - Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarships

Individuals with serious mental illness (SMI), a term that typically includes psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia and major mood disorders such as bi-polar disorder, are at increased risk for having many serious physical illnesses and high rates of death as a result. These patients are more prone to terminal illness because of genetic factors, medication usage, and social factors such as stigma, poverty, and unhealthy lifestyles. It is a priority for dying Canadians to access quality palliative care, however patients with SMI are less likely to receive such care. People with SMI are often cared for by mental health care providers such as psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and family doctors. Little is known about what happens to these patients when they are diagnosed with a life-threatening illness. The goal of my PhD dissertation is to interview and survey these mental health care providers about their experiences in caring for patients with SMI, and how they understand their role in caring for them at the end of life. To do this, I will interview 15 mental health care providers about their experiences, and will use the information I find in these interviews to create a survey, that I will distribute to 400 mental health care providers. This research has very important implications. For the first time, we will know from a health care provider perspective the barriers and facilitators of care for patients with SMI at the end of life. Mental illness of some degree affects approximately 1 in 5 Canadians, and approximately 90% of Canadians will die of a terminal or chronic illness and would benefit from palliative care. This study will provide new information about how to improve care for the most vulnerable groups such as patients with SMI, and when we ensure quality care for the most vulnerable as a baseline, care for all Canadians necessarily improves.