Natasha Berkeley is entering her second year of the Master of Social Work program at the University of Toronto. In the spring of 2003, she completed an Honours BA in psychology and sociology at Wilfrid Laurier University.

Under the supervision of Dr. Carol Strike, Natasha’s focused on:

• Writing segments of the Needle Exchange Program: Best Practice Recommendations document, which involved researching various topics related to harm reduction approaches for injection drug users. Natasha compiled the best practice recommendations for several sections including overdose prevention education, relationships with law enforcement, and needle exchange program referrals and counselling.
• Assisting with statistical analysis of survey data from the CAMH Stakeholder Capacity Project, which involved utilizing SPSS to analyze qualitative and quantitative survey responses from four surveys designed to assess priorities in the areas of youth, concurrent disorders and diversity.

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Marion is currently a third year student at the University of Applied Science in Hamburg, Germany Public Health. Her research interests are in evaluating the effectiveness and the outcomes of drug treatment programs with the goal of improving them. She will finish her training in January 2005. As part of her practicum, Marion has been with HSRCU from March-July 2003.

Prior to returning to school, Marion worked as a nurse for 18 years. During that time, she has gained a great deal of experiences in a variety of hospital departments as well as with different types of mental health and addiction problems.

Marion's Projects

Jennifer Gold completed an Undergraduate degree in Psychology from York University (2001) and this fall she'll be returning to McGill University for her third year of law school.

Jennifer's Projects

• Preparing a manuscript entitled, "Government Policymaking, the Psychological Response of Public to Terrorism, and Community Mental Health: What has Happened Since September 11?", which looks at how fear and other psychological responses have helped shape public policy since the 9/11 attacks. The paper is currently under review.
• She submitted a manuscript to Health Services Research in which she examined the problems that arise with respect to the ethics review of a multisite research project. The paper is titled, " Research Ethics Review Boards and Multisite Studies in Health Services Research: Is there a Better Way?"
• She also assisted with a project sponsored by the City of Toronto to investigate the provision of health care services to people who are homeless. The project looks at what services are currently provided at shelters, and the needs of people in shelters with respect to health care.

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Salinda Horgan is a Ph.D. candidate in Rehabilitation Science at Queen's University. Her interests lie primarily in the examination of the role of psychosocial interventions within community-based service delivery systems.

Salinda's Projects

During the course of the CAMH-HSRU Studentship, Salinda was primarily involved in developing two papers for publication:

• The first, a conceptual framework for the selection of satisfaction measures for mental health administrators.
• The second, an examination of the affect of philosophical orientation on the ability of ACT teams to meet client needs in psychosocial areas of care.

Salinda also participated with other members of the HSRCU in bi-weekly educational sessions and monthly statistical seminars.

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Natasha Greenberg is a student in the Social Science and Health program in the Department of Community Health at the University of Toronto. Her interests lie in the area of mental illness, and particularly understandings of and treatment for mental illnesses. She is also interested in perceptions of mental illness, in marginalized populations, particularly the homeless.

Natasha's Projects

• One of her summer projects was to assist in the planning for a program evaluation of a mobile treatment team for young adults experiencing their first episodes of schizophrenia. She attended and participated in research team meetings and began a literature search of scales frequently used to measure outcomes for community mental health programs.
• Natasha was also a member of a research team conducting an evaluation of a court diversion program for mentally ill offenders. In particular, Natasha conducted a site ethnography which has helped the team to begin to understand many of the complex health, justice, interpersonal and individual factors that need to be examined within the court program.

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Caroline O'Grady is completing her Ph.D. in Nursing at the University of Toronto. Caroline's interest are focussed on issues of stigma and mental illness, caregiving and concurrent disorders.

Caroline's Projects

• During the summer, Caroline and a Unit scientist worked together to develop a theoretical model concerning interpersonal and programmatic boundary problems for outreach workers.

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Niamh Harraher is a student in the Combined Law and Masters of Social Work program at the University of Toronto. Niamh has worked extensively with marginalized young people. In the past she has focused on drug dependent and street youth populations both in Ontario and Bangkok, Thailand. Niamh's main academic interest at present is legal history. She hopes to pursue this course of study from a child's rights perspective.

Niamh's Projects

• Part of a team led by Brian Rush and funded by Health Canada to develop best practices on the treatment and rehabilitation of individuals with concurrent disorders. My responsibilities included logistical support to the project co-ordinator and the writing of a major literature review on best practices in general, intended for an addictions and mental health audience.
• Worked on a proposal with George Tolomiczenko and his team to evaluate Court Room 102 (Toronto's mental health court & diversion program). My responsibilities included conducting key informant interviews with lawyers servicing the court.

Niamh's Links

• Halton Substance Abuse: Community Partners
• Human Development Centre

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Steve Petrica came to the Summer Studentship Program after finishing the Master of Public Health program at Johns Hopkins University. His background is clinical. After finishing the Master of Divinity degree at Yale, he went to work at the Connecticut Mental Health Center in New Haven. He was there for three years on the inpatient service, and for eleven years in an outpatient clinic. Over his last few years there he became interested in how public sector behavioural health patients fared under managed care, and that led to his decision to study health policy and public mental health at Hopkins.

Steve's Projects

• At CAMH Steve devoted the bulk of his time assisting Janet Durbin and Carolyn Dewa in the development of an instrument permitting cross-site comparisons for the Community Mental Health Evaluation Initiative, a longitudinal study of a variety of community-based mental health interventions. But as an American in Canada for the first time, he valued the opportunity to study first hand how Ontario organizes and delivers behavioural health care.
• He visited the Whitby Mental Health Centre, a major provincial psychiatric hospital, and met with Dr. Peter Prendergast, the Medical Director at Whitby; attended meetings of John Trainor's workgroup dealing with homelessness in Toronto, shadowed team members of Community Connection Intensive Brokerage Case Management team, observed groups focusing on workplace-based harm reduction programs for illicit drug users and attended meetings of Katherine Boydell's research advisory committee at CAMH's Queen Street site.

Steve's reading list:

• T.M. Luhrmann's book Of Two Minds, a study of the evolution of the mental health system in the U.S.
• Jay Neugeboren's memoir, Imagining Robert: My Brother, Madness, and Survival

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