A podcast with Dr. Melissa Walls
A month ago, myself and Dominique Geoffroy were happy to conduct a podcast interview with Dr. Melissa Walls on her article “Rebuilding our community”: Hearing silenced voices on Aboriginal youth suicide. The article was published in the February 2014 issue of Transcultural Psychiatry. In the podcast, Melissa discusses a qualitative study in which she traveled to three Aboriginal communities to discuss the issue of youth suicide with elders and service providers. Melissa and her team then classified the risks factors in Aboriginal youth suicidality identified by the communities into micro (interpersonal) stressors, meso (family/community level) stressors and macro (governmental, environmental, economic) stressors. They found that the community members were not emphasizing individual level pathologies (such as mental illness or depression), but that the strongest stressors identified by the focus groups were macro-level, particularly historical trauma.
To listen to the podcast, please click here.
It was great to hear Melissa talk about her work and how the results of that study led to her involvement in our current project!
Sophie