CURA Case Studies
Case study was one of the research methods employed in our CURA research. Case studies are a powerful method to illustrate in-depth examples of practical everyday life situations. This CURA used the case study approach to balance the breadth of data collected through focus groups, the web survey, and key-informant interviews with the depth of real life experience.
Eight individual case studies were conducted by CURA community researchers in the fall of 2006. Researchers interviewed people experiencing mental health problems. Four individuals from Toronto and another four from Waterloo Region were recruited to participate from the Mandarin, Polish, Sikh-Punjabi, and Latin-American communities. All participants were immigrants who had been in Canada at least five years, had struggled with mental health issues at some point while residing in Canada, and had some access to and experience with Canadian mental health services. Each participant also identified two “support” people to be interviewed for the case study. One informal support (family member or friend) and one formal support (practitioner or other professional) person was interviewed for each case study. Thus, three interviews were conducted for each of the eight case studies, for a total of 24 interviews.
Using the three interviews which make up each case study, transcripts were combined to create a narrative representing the story of the participant. These narratives were then used to corroborate and/or expand on some of the themes brought up in the focus groups. These case study narratives help us to achieve greater insights about mental health struggles and needed supports based on real life stories of eight people who came to Canada from diverse cultural backgrounds.
Please click on the links below to read each of the case studies.
Waterloo
Toronto