CENTRE TO STUDY MENTAL HEALTH, ADDICTION, INEQUALITY

How do the intersections of gender, race, poverty and other social
factors affect services and outcomes for people with mental health and
addiction issues?

That's one of the questions SFU's new Vancouver campus Centre for the
Study of Gender, Social Inequities and Mental Health plans to address.

The centre will investigate why there is unequal access to services
and health outcomes for people with mental illness and substance-use
problems.

It will also help develop programs, policies and interventions to
resolve these issues, with the goal of improving adult mental health
both in Canada and abroad.

SFU health scientists Marina Morrow and Elliot Goldner and the Mental
Health Commission of Canada's Howard Chodos will lead the centre,
which will include more than 30 national and international
co-investigators and collaborators.

Morrow, a community psychologist, specializes in research related to
gender and mental health and mental-health reform.

"I would say women are still under-served-most services don't take
gender into account," she says.

"Yet within the female population, women are more at risk of sexual
exploitation and violence, particularly if they suffer from mental
health issues."

Centre activities will focus on mental health reform; recovery and
housing; reproductive mental health; violence, mental health and
substance use; and the criminal justice system, mental health and
substance use.

"The centre has three main functions," explains Morrow. "To foster
research in the key priority areas, to develop knowledge exchange that
will encourage implementation of our research findings, and to mentor
and train students and community-based researchers who can build
capacity in the field of social inequities and mental health."

"There's a pressing need for this centre," she says, "because there
has been very little attention to the ways in which social and
structural determinants affect people with mental health issues."

The centre is being funded with nearly $2 million from the Institute
of Gender and Health, part of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.