American journal of community psychology
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Am J Community Psychol · Dec 2011
Unikkaartuit: meanings of well-being, unhappiness, health, and community change among Inuit in Nunavut, Canada.
Suicide among young Inuit in the Canadian Arctic is at an epidemic level. In order to understand the distress and well-being experienced in Inuit communities, a first step in understanding collective suicide, this qualitative study was designed. Fifty Inuit were interviewed in two Inuit communities in Nunavut, Canada, and questionnaires asking the same questions were given to 66 high school and college students. ⋯ Discontinuity of kinship structure and function appears to be the most harmful effect of the internal colonialism imposed by the Canadian government in the 1950s and 1960s. Directions toward community control and action are encouraging, and are highlighted. Inuit community action toward suicide prevention and community wellness is part of a larger movement of Indigenous self-determination.
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Am J Community Psychol · Dec 2011
Councils as empowering contexts: mobilizing the front line to foster systems change in the response to intimate partner violence.
Collaborative approaches to change are common, and though evidence for their effectiveness is equivocal, there is growing support that councils facilitate desired changes in the systems response to intimate partner violence. Questions remain regarding the specific mechanisms by which this change is facilitated, and recent work has focused on examining the intermediate processes through which councils may produce more distal change. One such mechanism relates to the potential of councils to be empowering contexts for their membership, often comprised of front-line providers and responders. ⋯ Study findings suggest that both contexts-council and organizational-are important when considering the degree to which members are empowered. Specifically, member participation, council leadership, and supportive council and organizational climates are significantly positively related to the degree to which councils function as empowering contexts. However, the effect of belonging to a council with a supportive climate, characterized in particular by shared power in decision-making, is stronger when members are from high organizational support settings versus low support settings.