Elder mental awareness research project receives $1.5 million grant

Apr 2, 2019 | 2:35 PM

PRINCE GEORGE— UNBC Psychology and Health Sciences professor, Dr. Henry Harder, and Executive Director of Research, Primary Care and Strategic Services with Carrier Sekani Family Services (CSFS), Dr. Travis Holyk, have received a $1.5 million grant to pursue a five-year research project focused on strengthening mental wellness and suicide prevention for Elders in B.C.’s Northern Interior.

The funding is provided through the Institute of Indigenous Peoples’ Health, part of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). The project will build on Harder and Holyk’s collaborative work with regional First Nations communities and stakeholders over the past decade, which examines and enhances mental health wellness in Indigenous youth and young adults. 

“This research, from its inception, has been community led, and it was our communities that indicated that mental health and suicide prevention needed to be addressed,” says Holyk, “The work to date has supported our organizational vision of providing services throughout the life cycle, and this next phase will help to complete the continuum as we seek to develop sustainable interventions for Elders.”  

The project will seek to develop tools and activities to boost community mental wellness and improve access to interventions across the life course with a specific focus on Elders, over the next five years. The project will implement and evaluate intervention across member nations of Carrier Sekani Family Services. It will also seek to share the suite of materials created through the study with other First Nations communities. 

“What sets Indigenous methodology apart is that it starts and ends with community,” explains Harder, “It means working with community members who help us to identify the project priorities and also point to the best ways to uncover the information needed to find solutions and best outcomes.  Basically, it puts the community ahead of the researcher, and we only pursue activities that directly benefit the community.”

The project is supported by the Research Support Fund, a tri-agency initiative of the SSHRC, CIHR and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC). It assists Canadian post-secondary institutions and their affiliated research hospitals and institutes with the expenses associated with managing the research funded by these three federal research granting agencies.

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