A Narrative Inquiry Into Global Systems Change to Support Families When a Parent Has a Mental Illness.

The issues that confront families when a parent experiences mental illness are complex. This often means that multiple service systems must be engaged to meet families' needs, including those related to intergenerational experiences of mental health and illness. A multisystem approach to public mental health care is widely recommended as a form of preventative intervention to address the effects of mental illness and its social, psychological, and economic impact upon parents, children, and families.

Children's Experiences of Cancer Care: A Systematic Review and Thematic Synthesis of Qualitative Studies.

Problem Identification: Improvements in pediatric cancer survival have increased interest in the experiences of children undergoing treatment; however, no review of the qualitative literature describing these experiences has been conducted.

Literature Search: Databases were searched from January 2000 to January 2016 for qualitative studies describing the experience of children with cancer aged 18 years or younger.

Data Evaluation: Two reviewers assessed abstracts for relevance and rated reporting comprehensiveness.

Analysis of a support group for children of parents with mental illnesses: managing stressful situations.

We report an ethnographic analysis of a psycho-education and peer-support program for school-aged children of parents with mental illnesses. We conducted a critical discourse analysis of the program manual and observed group interactions to understand whether children shared program goals predetermined by adults, and how, or if, the intervention was responsive to their needs. Children were expected to learn mental illness information because "knowledge is power," and to express difficult feelings about being a child of a mentally ill parent that was risky.

Reflections of young people who have had a first episode of psychosis: what attracted them to use alcohol and illicit drugs?

Aim: To identify factors that contribute to the initiation of alcohol and street drug use from the perspective of people who were enrolled in early intervention programmes for a first episode of psychosis.

Method: Eight focus groups were conducted involving an average of four to six participants per group, with each group consisting of young people who met provincial inclusion criteria for early intervention programmes. Thematic analysis was used to systematically code transcripts from the focus groups for concepts, patterns and themes related to early use of illicit substances.

Youth at ultra high risk for psychosis: using the Revised Network Episode Model to examine pathways to mental health care.

Aim: This paper aims to identify the ways in which youth at ultra high risk for psychosis access mental health services and the factors that advance or delay help seeking, using the Revised Network Episode Model (REV NEM) of mental health care.

Methods: A case study approach documents help-seeking pathways, encompassing two qualitative interviews with 10 young people and 29 significant others. Theoretical propositions derived from the REV NEM are explored, consisting of the content, structure and function of the: (i) family; (ii) community and school; and (iii) treatment system.

Children's experiences of parental mental illness: a literature review.

Aim: This paper provides a review of published qualitative research on children's experiences of parental mental illness.

Methods: We undertook a comprehensive search of Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System Online, PsycINFO, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, Sociological Abstracts and Applied Social Sciences Index and Abstracts databases, as well as citation searches in Web of Science and manual searches of other relevant journals and reference lists of primary papers.

Results: Although 20 studies met the search criteria, only 10 focused exclusively on children's descriptions of their experience--the remainder elicited adults' perspectives on children's experiences of parental mental illnesses.

Issues encountered in a qualitative secondary analysis of help-seeking in the prodrome to psychosis.

Primary data are rarely used explicitly as a source of data outside of the original research purpose for which they were collected. As a result, qualitative secondary analysis (QSA) has been described as an "invisible enterprise" for which there is a "notable silence" amongst the qualitative research community. In this paper, we report on the methodological implications of conducting a secondary analysis of qualitative data focusing on parents' narratives of help-seeking activities in the prodrome to psychosis.

Understanding help seeking delay in the prodrome to first episode psychosis: a secondary analysis of the perspectives of young people.

First episode psychosis represents a critical period for intervention to prevent future impairments and to initiate optimal interventions. Using an interpretive interactionist framework, a secondary analysis of interview transcripts was conducted based on the narratives of youth experiences of psychosis. Our goal was to better understand the factors involved in the decision to seek help (or not) from the mental health system.

Recasting research into children's experiences of parental mental illness: beyond risk and resilience.

Children who live with a mentally ill parent are viewed primarily as being 'at risk' of developing a mental illness themselves and those who remain well are considered extraordinarily resilient. This particular risk/resilience discourse is embedded within larger contemporary discourses about risk and childhood. Childhood is seen as a critical period of development during which children need protection due to their physical and psychological vulnerabilities.

Interpreting narratives of motivation and schizophrenia: a biopsychosocial understanding.

The concept of motivation involves a complex interplay of biopsychosocial and environmental determinants. For individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia, motivation has traditionally been approached from a neuro-biological standpoint, obscuring this complexity. The findings from this study underscore the importance of broadening our understanding of motivation and schizophrenia through an exploration of individual perspectives and identification of the psychosocial factors that clarify the experience of diminished motivation.

The Knowledge Resource Base: beginning the dialogue.

The Knowledge Resource Base (KRB) is a conceptual approach to the various types of knowledge used to understand and make sense of mental illness. It is an attempt to go beyond the everyday notion that real knowledge is in the hands of clinical experts and that consumers/survivors, families, and the public have little to contribute. There are four components to the KRB, each of which represents a different perspective or type of knowledge about mental illness; medical/clinical, social scientific, experiential, and customary/traditional.

The dialectic of friendship for people with psychiatric disabilities.

In the psychiatric literature, the meaning and importance of friendship has remained largely unexplored, subsumed under the rubric of social support or viewed as a component of community integration. Twenty-one qualitative interviews were conducted with individuals suffering from psychiatric disabilities focusing on the meaning of friendship as they described it. Analysis revealed the contrasts, contradiction and paradox of friendship for this group of people.