Amy Burke is currently studying engineering at the University of Toronto.

Amy's Projects:

• Working with Dr. Carolyn Dewa, I am performing a preliminary evaluation of a workshop created by the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA). This workshop is presented to managers in a variety of workplace settings. It aims to address accommodation of people with mental illnesses in the workplace.
• Working with Drs. Janet Durbin and Carolyn Dewa, I assisted in developing a description of the status of community mental health programs in Ontario. This summary was used in the preparation of protocols for two evaluations of Ontario’s community mental health system.

Back to the Top

Lori Sutton completed her Honours Bachelor of Applied Science in Food and Nutrition from Ryerson University in June 2004. Prior to her study in dietetics, Lori obtained a Bachelor of Physical Education degree from McMaster University. This fall she will be completing a post-graduate dietetic internship at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto.

Lori's Projects:

• Assisting with the data analysis for a study examining the Unmet Mental Health Needs of Methadone Clinic Clients. This qualitative study explores the individual, organizational, and system level barriers to mental health care service provision in non-traditional methadone clinics in Ontario.
• Assisting in the compilation of a paper utilizing the data from the Provincial Psychiatric Hospital and Community Assessment Projects (CAP) to track our progression toward mental health reform goals and to highlight lessons learned along the way.

Back to the Top

Nina is currently in her third year of undergraduate studies in the University of Toronto, majoring in Psychology. She has been working in HSRCU since September 2003 under the supervision of Dr. Carolyn Dewa and will continue working in the Unit during the 2004/2005 academic year. She will continue developing the skills learnt in the summer studentship by completing an independent research project in the Department of Psychiatry in the University of Toronto.

Nina's Projects:

• data cleaning, editing and analyzing a large datasets part of Community Mental Health Evaluation Initiative (CMHEI) and First Episode Project (FEP);
• Independent research project entitled "Perceived Burden of Primary Caregivers of Individuals Experiencing First Episode Psychosis", which examines the current state of knowledge on the topic, outlines the limitations of research and practices and points out recommendations for future work.

Back to the Top

Christina initially began working for CAMH in the HSRCU October of 2003 before beginning a studentship in June of 2004 under the supervision of Dr. Brian Rush.

Christina's Projects:

• I initially began the summer working on the Explaining Outcomes project, completing data entry and doing some statistical analyses on the data. I then worked with Dr. Rush in creating a comorbidity database which included literature searches and extensive use of Reference Manager. In July, I worked with Jennifer Puddicombe on her project, assisting with literature reviews and the organization of data. Throughout July and August, I conducted an independent literature review examining the relationship between cannabis and schizophrenia, focusing mainly on longitudinal studies. I explored some of the methodological issues within these studies that may have influenced the results. In August, I completed data entry for Natalia Zaslavska and I also worked on the CMHEI and FEP projects, where my tasks included transcribing interviews, data entry, and data cleaning, working mainly with SPSS and TELEform. Finally, I assisted Dianne Macfarlane on her Grey Bruce Huron Perth project by typing up reports and various interviews, as well as creating slides for a presentation.

Back to the Top

Kenneth is going into his fourth year at the University of Toronto. He will graduate in June 2005 with an Honours degree in Psychology and Economics. He has been volunteering at CAMH since 2003. He plans to pursue graduate studies in psychology.

Kenneth's Projects:

• Unmet/Undermet needs in Depression (grant proposal)
  • This project aims to re-examine the paradigms and assumptions about unmet or overmet needs amongst individuals suffering from depression. For this grant proposal, Kenneth performed literature searches and wrote part of the literature review.
• Chart Audit: Hospital Report Card Project
  • The purpose of the chart audit project is to validate criteria that were previously used to assess and rate hospitals in the Report Card Project. Patient charts from mental health institutions across the province were reviewed and important information was collected into a dataset.
    • Kenneth created a codebook for the dataset.
    • He also used Access and SPSS to analyze the data. For example, he examined whether hospital admissions listed as repeated admissions are actually patients who returned to the ward after a weekend pass.
• Motor Proficiency and Body Composition
  • The data for this project came from a previous study on elementary school children in the Niagara region.
  • Using AMOS, Kenneth examined the relationships between body composition, motor proficiency, physical activity and self-efficacy towards physical activity.

  Back to the Top

Claire is in her fourth year at the University of Toronto, completing an Honours degree in psychology and anthropology. She has been volunteering at CAMH since 2002 and plans on pursuing graduate studies in the area of cross-cultural psychology.

Claire's Projects:

• A qualitative study looking at the roles emergency departments and primary care settings play in the mental health care of suicidal men. Claire participated in team meetings, group coding sessions, and the development of the coding structure. Other tasks included: literature searches, a mini-analysis of the transcripts and the mapping of interactions suicidal men had with various health care professionals.
• A preliminary analysis of recovery-oriented programs and organizations. Claire contacted professionals from institutions in various jurisdictions to obtain information on current applications of a recovery approach. She also obtained recommendations as to what recovery oriented systems should look like. Key themes and principles were summarized and presented to the Recovery Project Reference Group at CAMH.

Back to the Top

Elizabeth Ben-Ishai completed her honours BA in the spring of 2003 with a specialist in Political Science. In September 2003, she will pursue her PhD in Political Theory at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbour.

Back to the Top

Elizabeth's Projects:

• Working a report about the system level requirements for the implementation of Best Practices. This involved searching the available literature, examining other jurisdictions where Best Practices have been implemented, and conducting interviews.
• She also assisted with organizing a new course in the Department of Population Health Sciences, "Population Health Perspectives in Mental Health and Addictions."
• She also participated in a qualitative study of caregiver burden while caring for children experiencing first episode psychosis. Her contributions included some literature searching, transcription, and assisting in the analysis of transcripts.

Back to the Top

Crystal Layne completed her honours BSc in the spring of 2003. Crystal is looking to continue her work in the field of health systems and/or community health research this fall.

Crystal's Projects:

• Assisting with a project investigating the relationship between socio-economic status and distress in older adults and searching for literature on mental heath service use in the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgendered and Queer (LGBTQ) population
• Performing background research for the Ontario Hospital Act report card project, where she researched and reported on performance monitoring systems within North America.

Back to the Top

Ellis Ostovich is in the final stages of completing and undergraduate degree at the University of Toronto with a specialist in psychology and a major in criminology.

Ellis's Projects:

Her summer projects included assisting in the literature reviews and qualitative data analysis for studies on:

• Identify processes in users of low threshold methadone programs
• The development of an instrument to assess community support programs for people with severe mental illness
• Learning qualitative data software, such as NVivo and QSR N6

Back to the Top

Emily is a third yearAnthropology student at the University of Western Ontario. This is her second summer in the Health Systems Research and Consulting Unit but has been working at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health every summer since 1998. She began in the Human Resources department as a grade 12 co-op student and has worked in several different departments since.

Emily's Projects:

• the Explaining Outcomes project which looks at how community programs work with the severely mentally ill to meet their needs. This five year project looks at topics such as food and nutrition and housing to assess if the consumer's needs are in fact being met by the community programs available to them. Emily has been providing support in the questionnaire development and data collection efforts;
• a new project using microsimulation models to estimate future mental health expenditures. For this project, Emily has been engaged in several literature searches gathering information for this project;
• the Community Mental Health Evaluation Initiative (CMHEI) project which is a 5-year project multi-site evaluation of community mental health programs throughout the Province. For this, she has been involved in data entry and database management activities and
• theCommunity Assessment Project, a project assessing the mental health service needs and use of services delivered to individuals with mental illness in Ontario. Emily has been involved with database management activities including the development of codebooks for the various datasets and merging of the datasets.

Back to the Top

Denise Marigold is going into her fourth year at York University. She will be completing a BSc with specialized honours in psychology in 2003. Denise will be applying to grad school this fall, and she hopes to start her Master's in September 2003 in social psychology research.

Denise's Projects:

• the development of a graphical method to measure outcomes on several parameters of Hospital Report Card data;
• assistance in preparation of a grant proposal for a study of suicidal men who use Distress Centre lines; and
• data cleaning, editing and analyses on several large datasets for projects examining substance abuse treatment and methodone use.

Back to the Top