• CMAJ · May 2018

    "All my relations": experiences and perceptions of Indigenous patients connecting with Indigenous Elders in an inner city primary care partnership for mental health and well-being.

    • George Hadjipavlou, Colleen Varcoe, David Tu, Jennifer Dehoney, Roberta Price, and Annette J Browne.
    • Department of Psychiatry ( Hadjipavlou), School of Nursing (Varcoe, Browne, Price), Department of Family Practice (Tu), University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC; Member of the Missanabie Cree First Nation (Dehoney), Missanabie, Ont.; Member of the Snuneymuxw, Nanaimo, BC and Cowichan First Nations (Price), Duncan, BC hadj@mail.ubc.ca.
    • CMAJ. 2018 May 22; 190 (20): E608E615E608-E615.

    BackgroundMental health services in urban settings generally have not been adapted to serve the needs of Indigenous patients. We explored how patients' encounters with Indigenous Elders affected their overall mental health and well-being to identify therapeutic mechanisms underlying improvement.MethodsWe conducted qualitative interviews of participants enrolled in a 6-month prospective mixed-methods evaluation of a program for mental health and well-being that featured the inclusion of Elders in the direct care of Indigenous patients in an inner city primary care clinic. Individual semistructured interviews were conducted to explore patients' experiences and perceptions of their participation in the Elders program.ResultsWe included 37 participants from at least 20 different First Nations. All but 1 participant described substantial benefits from their encounters with Elders, and none reported being negatively affected. Five overarching themes were identified: experiencing healing after prolonged periods of seeking and desperation; strengthening cultural identity and belonging; developing trust and opening up; coping with losses; and engaging in ceremony and spiritual dimensions of care as a resource for hope.InterpretationOur evaluation illustrates that the Elders program was perceived by participants to have a broad range of positive impacts on their care and well-being. Although this study was based on experiences at a single urban clinic, these findings support the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada's calls to action regarding the inclusion of Elders as a strategy to improve care of Indigenous patients in Canadian health care systems.© 2018 Joule Inc. or its licensors.

      Pubmed     Free full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…