This article details the transformation of an empty store into a gallery honouring youth and othe... more This article details the transformation of an empty store into a gallery honouring youth and others who have passed away from overdoses, and the creation of extensive harm reduction and grief support programming that accompanied the display of artwork. The outpouring of community interest, participation, and emotion that surfaced around heART space clearly shows how art, exhibitions and creative programming can help foster communities of care during times of crisis. Drawing from research into practices of care from harm reduction work, grief studies and participatory arts and curatorial studies, the authors explore how heART space comforted youth and others with direct experiences with overdose and disenfranchised grief while creating dialogues with visitors about the stigma of drug use and homelessness. The authors argue curating heART space produced an opportunity for community healing while nuancing and humanizing the way we see people who use drugs. As such, this youth-driven co...
In public discourses, friendships among street-involved youth are often regarded as sources of de... more In public discourses, friendships among street-involved youth are often regarded as sources of delinquent or risky behaviour. Through interviews with street-involved youth in Victoria, BC, we explore youth's ideas about their friendships. Our analysis suggests that the youth we interviewed have created a “relational refuge,” that is, a social space and metaphorical home constituted through trust, proximity, and sharing of emotions and resources. Our research highlights how friendships can mediate some of the harmful aspects of street life for youth by enabling collective forms and practices of generalised reciprocity, acceptance and collaboration.
Street involved youth experience both increased rates of mortality and the all too frequent death... more Street involved youth experience both increased rates of mortality and the all too frequent deaths of people they know, rely on, and care about. In this paper, we explore how street-involved youth dealing with the death of peers or family are engaging in what Mattingly calls 'moral laboratories', that is, 'experiments in how life might or should be lived' (2014, 27). Drawing from interviews with youth in Victoria, Canada, we analyse aspects of their narratives on social media and grief-finding out about the death, what to post, and supporting others. The affordances of social media mean news of a death can spread like wildfire, private lives become public, the deceased's reputation is scrutinized and judged, as are the words and actions of youth trying to survive. In offline and online spaces, marginalized youth experiment with expressing their grief, rage, and hope, with mourning and memorializing, navigating fractured and complicated relationships, and finding ways to support themselves and others. We argue that thinking about the 'moral lives' of street youth can highlight important aspects of their relationships of family, friendships, and community and their strategies for both protecting these key relationships and finding reasons to keep on living.
Youth who use drugs (YWUD) are likely to encounter the police and experience victimization within... more Youth who use drugs (YWUD) are likely to encounter the police and experience victimization within those encounters. Negative experiences of police among youth can dramatically undermine youths’ trust in police, making them unlikely to ask for help when they need it. In this article, we use Rance and Fraser’s concept of “accidental intimacies” between staff and people who inject drugs arising in encounters within supervised consumption sites. Their exploration of Sarah Ahmed’s work on the social productivity of emotions argues that new subjectivities that counter or transform stigma and shame surrounding drug use can occur from the space between individuals. For Ahmed “emotions do things, and work to align individuals with collectives—[linking] bodily space with social space—through the very intensity of their attachments.” During 2017–2018, 38 youth (aged 16–30 years) who use drugs in three cities in British Columbia, Canada, were interviewed to explore their encounters (both positi...
Recent scholarship has highlighted the power of narrative research to reveal personal and collect... more Recent scholarship has highlighted the power of narrative research to reveal personal and collective meanings, social relationships, and the ideas, structures and processes that shape people's lives (Langellier; Mattingly and Garro; Sandelowski). Narrative research with street-involved people has analyzed their stories as representations of experience and meaning (George and O'Neill); as "accommodation biographies" (May 615); as life histories of social exclusion, precarity, and agency (Dolson, "Trauma"; McNaughton); as strategies for negotiating identity (Berman; Downe); and as "war stories" of adventure, suffering, and survival (Singer et al.). In this corpus of work, two interconnected approaches are relevant to our discussion. One approach, narrative content analysis,
Page 1. Enchanted Worlds: Visayan Children's Perspectives on Living among Engkanto Lisa ... more Page 1. Enchanted Worlds: Visayan Children's Perspectives on Living among Engkanto Lisa M. Mitchell and Marjorie Mitchell In the Visayan Philippines, engkanto are a diverse category of spirits and supernatural entities. Children ...
Despite a plethora of studies counting, examining, assessing, and diagnosing Filipino children li... more Despite a plethora of studies counting, examining, assessing, and diagnosing Filipino children living in poverty, children's own perceptions and concerns about their health and security are rarely elicited. This article draws from fieldwork in an urban neighbourhood in the Visayan Philippines among children who, every day, face a complex and precarious landscape dominated by multigenerational poverty, social marginalization, recurring hunger, and the hazards of living and playing amidst mounting garbage and effluent. I discuss children's perspectives on body and illness in this challenging environment and examine their ideas within the larger context of adult-child, hierarchical relationships, and colonial and contemporary government discourses on children, health, and citizenship. I also examine children's sense of place, agency, and vulnerability, and I discuss the view held by many adults in this community: their children's ideas hold little value.
Ultrasound imaging is an important screening and diagnostic tool in prenatal care, but for many c... more Ultrasound imaging is an important screening and diagnostic tool in prenatal care, but for many couples in Canada and the United States, it is primarily a meaningful social ritual of seeing and meeting their baby. This article examines how women perceive ultrasound when they receive unexpected abnormal ultrasound findings. Drawing from qualitative analysis of semistructured interviews with 42 Canadian women, the article discusses women's reactions to receiving unexpected findings, and their perspectives on disclosure of results and on seeing the impaired fetus. Implications are discussed for practitioners regarding prescan counseling, informed choice, and disclosure of abnormal ultrasound findings.
San Francisco. Her research, most of which is funded by the National Institutes of Health, focuse... more San Francisco. Her research, most of which is funded by the National Institutes of Health, focuses on informed decision making among sociodemographically diverse women in the contexts of prenatal genetic testing, mode of delivery, management of noncancerous uterine conditions and prevention of cervical and breast cancer.
American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, 2008
Objective To examine the association between maternal caffeine consumption from coffee and tea du... more Objective To examine the association between maternal caffeine consumption from coffee and tea during pregnancy and offspring behavioral disorders. Study design We studied 47 491 children enrolled in the Danish National Birth Cohort between 1996 and 2002. Data on maternal coffee and tea consumption was collected at 15 and 30 weeks of gestation. When the child was 11 years old, the Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire was filled in by children, parents, and teachers. We estimated risk ratios (RRs) for offspring behavioral disorders. Results At 15 weeks of gestation 3% and 4% of the pregnant women consumed ≥8 cups/d of coffee or tea, respectively. Maternal coffee consumption ≥8 cups/d at 15 weeks of gestation was associated with increased risk of hyperactivity-inattention disorder (RR 1.47; 95% CI 1.18-1.83), conduct-oppositional disorders (RR 1.22; 95% CI 1.01-1.48), and any psychiatric disorder (RR 1.23; 95% CI 1.08-1.40). Maternal tea consumption ≥8 cups/d at 15 weeks of gestation was associated with increased risk of anxiety-depressive disorders (RR 1.28; 95% CI 1.09-1.52) and any psychiatric disorder (RR 1.24; 95% CI 1.11-1.40). An increased risk of hyperactivity-inattention disorder was observed with increasing daily caffeine consumption at 15 weeks of gestation. Conclusion High maternal caffeine consumption from coffee and tea at 15 weeks of gestation was associated with behavioral disorders in 11-year-old offspring. We hypothesize that caffeine exposure may affect the fetal brain and program for behavioral disorders later in life. The fetal brain seems to be more sensitive to caffeine exposure at 15 weeks of pregnancy compared with 30 weeks of gestation.
We found 3 distortions in these scenarios, including the tendency to 1) regard numeric risk estim... more We found 3 distortions in these scenarios, including the tendency to 1) regard numeric risk estimates alone, in isolation from women's values and social contexts, as determinative of individual clinical decisions and health policy; 2) focus on the risks associated with undertaking medical interventions during pregnancy to the exclusion of demonstrable risks to both woman and fetus of failing to intervene; and 3) abjure even minor risks to the fetus, even those that would in other contexts be deemed acceptable and which involve medical considerations important to the well- ...
Great resource guide for youth (street-involved or not) living in Victoria, BC. Many of the secti... more Great resource guide for youth (street-involved or not) living in Victoria, BC. Many of the sections are relevant to any of us in the world, but have tenancy rights information relevant to British Columbia, Canada. Created by the collaborative research team of More Than One Street
This article details the transformation of an empty store into a gallery honouring youth and othe... more This article details the transformation of an empty store into a gallery honouring youth and others who have passed away from overdoses, and the creation of extensive harm reduction and grief support programming that accompanied the display of artwork. The outpouring of community interest, participation, and emotion that surfaced around heART space clearly shows how art, exhibitions and creative programming can help foster communities of care during times of crisis. Drawing from research into practices of care from harm reduction work, grief studies and participatory arts and curatorial studies, the authors explore how heART space comforted youth and others with direct experiences with overdose and disenfranchised grief while creating dialogues with visitors about the stigma of drug use and homelessness. The authors argue curating heART space produced an opportunity for community healing while nuancing and humanizing the way we see people who use drugs. As such, this youth-driven co...
In public discourses, friendships among street-involved youth are often regarded as sources of de... more In public discourses, friendships among street-involved youth are often regarded as sources of delinquent or risky behaviour. Through interviews with street-involved youth in Victoria, BC, we explore youth's ideas about their friendships. Our analysis suggests that the youth we interviewed have created a “relational refuge,” that is, a social space and metaphorical home constituted through trust, proximity, and sharing of emotions and resources. Our research highlights how friendships can mediate some of the harmful aspects of street life for youth by enabling collective forms and practices of generalised reciprocity, acceptance and collaboration.
Street involved youth experience both increased rates of mortality and the all too frequent death... more Street involved youth experience both increased rates of mortality and the all too frequent deaths of people they know, rely on, and care about. In this paper, we explore how street-involved youth dealing with the death of peers or family are engaging in what Mattingly calls 'moral laboratories', that is, 'experiments in how life might or should be lived' (2014, 27). Drawing from interviews with youth in Victoria, Canada, we analyse aspects of their narratives on social media and grief-finding out about the death, what to post, and supporting others. The affordances of social media mean news of a death can spread like wildfire, private lives become public, the deceased's reputation is scrutinized and judged, as are the words and actions of youth trying to survive. In offline and online spaces, marginalized youth experiment with expressing their grief, rage, and hope, with mourning and memorializing, navigating fractured and complicated relationships, and finding ways to support themselves and others. We argue that thinking about the 'moral lives' of street youth can highlight important aspects of their relationships of family, friendships, and community and their strategies for both protecting these key relationships and finding reasons to keep on living.
Youth who use drugs (YWUD) are likely to encounter the police and experience victimization within... more Youth who use drugs (YWUD) are likely to encounter the police and experience victimization within those encounters. Negative experiences of police among youth can dramatically undermine youths’ trust in police, making them unlikely to ask for help when they need it. In this article, we use Rance and Fraser’s concept of “accidental intimacies” between staff and people who inject drugs arising in encounters within supervised consumption sites. Their exploration of Sarah Ahmed’s work on the social productivity of emotions argues that new subjectivities that counter or transform stigma and shame surrounding drug use can occur from the space between individuals. For Ahmed “emotions do things, and work to align individuals with collectives—[linking] bodily space with social space—through the very intensity of their attachments.” During 2017–2018, 38 youth (aged 16–30 years) who use drugs in three cities in British Columbia, Canada, were interviewed to explore their encounters (both positi...
Recent scholarship has highlighted the power of narrative research to reveal personal and collect... more Recent scholarship has highlighted the power of narrative research to reveal personal and collective meanings, social relationships, and the ideas, structures and processes that shape people's lives (Langellier; Mattingly and Garro; Sandelowski). Narrative research with street-involved people has analyzed their stories as representations of experience and meaning (George and O'Neill); as "accommodation biographies" (May 615); as life histories of social exclusion, precarity, and agency (Dolson, "Trauma"; McNaughton); as strategies for negotiating identity (Berman; Downe); and as "war stories" of adventure, suffering, and survival (Singer et al.). In this corpus of work, two interconnected approaches are relevant to our discussion. One approach, narrative content analysis,
Page 1. Enchanted Worlds: Visayan Children's Perspectives on Living among Engkanto Lisa ... more Page 1. Enchanted Worlds: Visayan Children's Perspectives on Living among Engkanto Lisa M. Mitchell and Marjorie Mitchell In the Visayan Philippines, engkanto are a diverse category of spirits and supernatural entities. Children ...
Despite a plethora of studies counting, examining, assessing, and diagnosing Filipino children li... more Despite a plethora of studies counting, examining, assessing, and diagnosing Filipino children living in poverty, children's own perceptions and concerns about their health and security are rarely elicited. This article draws from fieldwork in an urban neighbourhood in the Visayan Philippines among children who, every day, face a complex and precarious landscape dominated by multigenerational poverty, social marginalization, recurring hunger, and the hazards of living and playing amidst mounting garbage and effluent. I discuss children's perspectives on body and illness in this challenging environment and examine their ideas within the larger context of adult-child, hierarchical relationships, and colonial and contemporary government discourses on children, health, and citizenship. I also examine children's sense of place, agency, and vulnerability, and I discuss the view held by many adults in this community: their children's ideas hold little value.
Ultrasound imaging is an important screening and diagnostic tool in prenatal care, but for many c... more Ultrasound imaging is an important screening and diagnostic tool in prenatal care, but for many couples in Canada and the United States, it is primarily a meaningful social ritual of seeing and meeting their baby. This article examines how women perceive ultrasound when they receive unexpected abnormal ultrasound findings. Drawing from qualitative analysis of semistructured interviews with 42 Canadian women, the article discusses women's reactions to receiving unexpected findings, and their perspectives on disclosure of results and on seeing the impaired fetus. Implications are discussed for practitioners regarding prescan counseling, informed choice, and disclosure of abnormal ultrasound findings.
San Francisco. Her research, most of which is funded by the National Institutes of Health, focuse... more San Francisco. Her research, most of which is funded by the National Institutes of Health, focuses on informed decision making among sociodemographically diverse women in the contexts of prenatal genetic testing, mode of delivery, management of noncancerous uterine conditions and prevention of cervical and breast cancer.
American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, 2008
Objective To examine the association between maternal caffeine consumption from coffee and tea du... more Objective To examine the association between maternal caffeine consumption from coffee and tea during pregnancy and offspring behavioral disorders. Study design We studied 47 491 children enrolled in the Danish National Birth Cohort between 1996 and 2002. Data on maternal coffee and tea consumption was collected at 15 and 30 weeks of gestation. When the child was 11 years old, the Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire was filled in by children, parents, and teachers. We estimated risk ratios (RRs) for offspring behavioral disorders. Results At 15 weeks of gestation 3% and 4% of the pregnant women consumed ≥8 cups/d of coffee or tea, respectively. Maternal coffee consumption ≥8 cups/d at 15 weeks of gestation was associated with increased risk of hyperactivity-inattention disorder (RR 1.47; 95% CI 1.18-1.83), conduct-oppositional disorders (RR 1.22; 95% CI 1.01-1.48), and any psychiatric disorder (RR 1.23; 95% CI 1.08-1.40). Maternal tea consumption ≥8 cups/d at 15 weeks of gestation was associated with increased risk of anxiety-depressive disorders (RR 1.28; 95% CI 1.09-1.52) and any psychiatric disorder (RR 1.24; 95% CI 1.11-1.40). An increased risk of hyperactivity-inattention disorder was observed with increasing daily caffeine consumption at 15 weeks of gestation. Conclusion High maternal caffeine consumption from coffee and tea at 15 weeks of gestation was associated with behavioral disorders in 11-year-old offspring. We hypothesize that caffeine exposure may affect the fetal brain and program for behavioral disorders later in life. The fetal brain seems to be more sensitive to caffeine exposure at 15 weeks of pregnancy compared with 30 weeks of gestation.
We found 3 distortions in these scenarios, including the tendency to 1) regard numeric risk estim... more We found 3 distortions in these scenarios, including the tendency to 1) regard numeric risk estimates alone, in isolation from women's values and social contexts, as determinative of individual clinical decisions and health policy; 2) focus on the risks associated with undertaking medical interventions during pregnancy to the exclusion of demonstrable risks to both woman and fetus of failing to intervene; and 3) abjure even minor risks to the fetus, even those that would in other contexts be deemed acceptable and which involve medical considerations important to the well- ...
Great resource guide for youth (street-involved or not) living in Victoria, BC. Many of the secti... more Great resource guide for youth (street-involved or not) living in Victoria, BC. Many of the sections are relevant to any of us in the world, but have tenancy rights information relevant to British Columbia, Canada. Created by the collaborative research team of More Than One Street
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