Page 12 - Course Outline

Version September 7, 2020

Week 9: Resilience & mental wellness
November 2-8, 2020

*Peer review of two Commentary essays due.
Class Objectives:
1. To examine how mental health and place (particularly Northern, rural, and remote) are
interconnected.
2. To become familiar with strategies that have been (and are being) used to address mental
health challenges in rural communities.

Required Readings:
1. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. (2015). Calls to Action.
http://www.trc.ca/websites/trcinstitution/File/2015/Findings/Calls_to_Action_English2.p
df
2. Caxaj, C.S. (2016). A review of mental health approaches for rural communities: complexities
and opportunities in the Canadian context. Canadian Journal of Community Mental Health, 35(1),
29-45.
3. Nelson, S. (2012). Challenging Hidden Assumptions: Colonial Norms as Determinants of
Aboriginal Mental Health. Prince George, BC: National Collaborating Centre for Aboriginal
Health.
4. Boksa, P., Joober, R., & Kirmayer, L.J. (2015). Metal wellness in Canada’s Aboriginal
communities: striving toward reconciliation. Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience, 40(6), 363-
365.

Week 10: Special populations

November 9-15, 2020

Remembrance day holiday November 11, 2020

Class Objectives:
1. To critically examine on how particular populations within some northern, rural, and remote
communities can experience health differently or face adversities.
2. To become familiar with a diverse range of circumstances and realities that uniquely affects
the health of particular populations in rural and remote communities in Canada.

Required Readings:
1. Hoogsteen, L., & Woodgate, R. L. (2013). Embracing autism in Canadian rural communities.
Australian Journal of Rural Health, 21(3), 178-182.
2. Colins, A., & Leier, B. (2017). Can medical assistance in dying harm rural and remote
palliative care in Canada? Canadian Family Physician, 63, 186-190.
3. Bacsu, J., Jeffery, B., Abonyi, S., Johnson, S., Novik, N., Martz, D., & Oosman, S. (2014).
Healthy Aging in Place: Perceptions of Rural Older Adults. Educational Gerontology, 40(5),
327-337.
4. Baker, K. (2012) "Taking New Directions: How Rural Queerness Provides Unique Insights
into Place, Class, and Visibility," Totem: The University of Western Ontario Journal of Anthropology,
20(1), Article 2. Available at: http://ir.lib.uwo.ca/totem/vol20/iss1/2

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