Theses / Unpublished

Gender and Sexuality

Alexander, Kathryn. Writing up/writing down a textual ethnography: Documentation practices in a mental health boarding home. Unpublished MA thesis, Simon Fraser University, 1993. Thesis examines the daily log from a community mental health boarding home written by mental health workers and discusses daily work shifts and social relations and some “forms of reading and writing [that] may also open up possibilities of resistance, creativity and connection within institutions.”

Allen, Thomas. Someone to talk to: Care and Control of the homeless. 1997. Unpublished MA thesis, Simon Fraser University, 1997. Thesis discusses the life experiences of the homeless in BC and their life histories.

Balfour, G. C. A qualitative study of feminist therapy in Kingston’s Prison for Women. Unpublished MA thesis, University of Ottawa, 1994.

Block, L. A. Alternative representation of women and mental illness: Inpatients in the waiting room. Unpublished MA thesis, University of Toronto, 1999.

Carson, J. P. From the voices of experience, the road to recovery. Unpublished MSW thesis, University of British Columbia, 2000. Thesis presents stories of six individuals and their experience in the psychiatric system to consider possible routes to healing.

Coates, Jacqueline S. “I wouldn’t tell them anything personal”: Women’s experience of psychiatric intervention. Unpublished MA thesis, Simon Fraser University, 1997. Thesis considers women’s experience of the psychiatric system as a source of oppression, including psychiatric ideology, treatment, stigmatization. Also presents stories of how women resisted the psychiatric system.

Crisanti, Annette S. A Descriptional Longitudinal Cohort Study of Involuntary Psychiatric Inpatients. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Calgary, 1998. Thesis considers the differences in outcomes of involuntary versus voluntary hospitalization and discusses the gender and socio-demographic profiles of patients who are involuntarily hospitalized.

Czaika, Gabrielle. The Social Construction of Female Criminality: Women, Mental Health, and the Criminal Justice System. Unpublished MA thesis, Concordia University, 2001.  Thesis discusses the ideology behind decisions regarding whether individuals go to mental health facilities or penal institutions and considers the role of the social construction of gender in this process.

Davidson, Lisa A. Social Hopelessness and Psychological Adjustment in Stressful Life Situations.  Unpublished PhD thesis, York University, 1997. Thesis discusses the connection between social hopelessness and depression and consider postpartum depression among women.

Davies, Megan J. The Patients’ World: British Columbia’s Mental Health Facilities, 1910-1935. Unpublished MA thesis, University of Waterloo, 1989.  Thesis examines the world of asylum inmates, considering gender, work, therapy and entering and leaving the institution.

Dooley, Christopher Patrick Alan. “When Love and Skill Work Together:” Work, Skill and the Occupational Culture of Mental Nurses at the Brandon Hospital for Mental Diseases, 1919-1946.  Unpublished MA thesis, University of Manitoba, 1998. Thesis discusses the occupational identity and surrounding culture of the mental nurse as different from the general nurse, looking at the poor working conditions, long hours and restrictive regulations and considers the gendered implications of the nursing profession.

Duncan, V. The importance of social support for women on their road to recovery. Unpublished MSW thesis, McGill University, 2001.

Durdle, J.L. Women, health and social change in a rural Newfoundland community. Unpublished MA thesis, Memorial University, 2001.

Ejiogu, Nwadiogo Ijeoma. “A Clinic for the World”: Race, Biomedical Citizenship and Gendered National Subject Formation in Canada. Unpublished MA thesis, University of Toronto, 2009. Thesis discusses Canada’s history of using state policy to reject immigrants and maintain Canada as a “white, healthy, fit, and productive” nation and the author’s personal experience with this topic.

Graham, John R. The Haven: A Toronto Charity for Women, 1878-1930. Unpublished M.A. Thesis: Queen’s University, 1990.

Goatcher, Sandra M. Attitudes of Older Adults Toward Their Peers with Mental Disabilities. Unpublished MSc thesis, University of Manitoba, 2000.  Thesis discusses the attitudes of older adults without disabilities towards their peers with disabilities in the setting of community-based senior programs. Income is one factor examined in the study.

Hanna, Lisa J. Chronic Manic Depressives, Schizoaffectives and their Female Family Caregivers: The Political Economy of Mental Health Care and the Governance of Madness. Unpublished MA thesis, Carleton University, 1998. Thesis discusses the burden of long-term caregiving for individuals with mental health diagnoses living in the community and how this work is often undertaken by women.

Harold, Alison May. Psychiatrists and nurses: A sociological study of psychiatric ideologies and practices in an institutional setting. Unpublished MA, Simon Fraser University, 1978. Thesis discusses therapeutic ideologies and practices at the Crease Clinic at BC’s Riverview Hospital and argues that differences in psychiatric ideology are based on gender.

Jacobs, K. J. Relationships between abuse and physical/mental health in a sample of urban help-seeking women. Unpublished PhD thesis, McGill University, 2007.

Johnson, M. Audrey. The Impact of Gender and Ethnicity on the Use of Mental Health Services: A Case Study of Twenty Immigrant and Refugee Women. Unpublished MSW thesis, University of British Columbia, 1988.  Thesis considers the absence of immigrant and refugee women from discussion of policy issues, programme planning and mental health literature in general and evaluates the socio-economic impacts of migrant experiences.

Joseph, B.E. Stress as a reaction to racism. Unpublished MSW thesis, McGill University, 1999. Thesis discusses how racism and sexism and stress are intertwined, in particular by looking at the lives of Black social service workers, how they experience racism and its impacts.

Kakuma, R. Utilization of health services for depression and anxiety in Ontario: An eleven-year comparison of determinants. Unpublished PhD thesis, McGill University, 2007. Thesis compares the utilization of health services between 1991 and 2002 in Ontario by people with different mental health diagnoses and discusses enabling or impeding factors for many people, including income.

Kelm, Mary-Ellen. Women and Families in the Asylum Practice of Charles Edward Doherty at the Provincial Hospital for the Insane 1905-1915. Unpublished M.A. Thesis: Simon Fraser University, 1990.

Kendall, Kathleen A. Gender Differences in Psychiatric Service Utilization in Saskatchewan. Unpublished M.A. Thesis, University of Saskatchewan, 1987.

Krasnick, Cheryl Lynn. Insanity as a Reflection of Morality and Social Values in Nineteenth Century Canada: The London, Ontario Asylum for the Insane, 1870-1902. Unpublished MA thesis, University of Western Ontario, 1981. Thesis examines patients at the Ontario Asylum for the Insane/ London Psychiatric Hospital, discussing the types of people who were committed, the administrators, and contemporary ideas about insanity and treatment, gender roles, sexuality and family life.

MacDonald, Tanis Louise. The Daughter’s Consolation: Melancholia and Subjectivity in Canadian Women’s Paternal Elegies. Unpublished PhD thesis, 2005. Thesis investigates notions of female filial piety and subjectivity through literary writings about loss and mourning.

Mamak, Mini. Violence and Major Mental Illness. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Toronto, 1997. Thesis examines the relationship between mental illness and violent behaviour, discussing the differences between substance abuse and delusional or affective disorders and the types of crimes committed. The gendered aspects of this topic are considered.

Matheson, Elizabeth. The Perfect Home for the Imbalanced: Visual Culture and the Built Space of the Asylum in Early Twentieth Century and Post War Saskatchewan. Unpublished Masters Art History thesis, 2010. Thesis discusses how the built structure of the North Battleford and Weyburn Mental Hospitals became imbued with meaning and in turn shaped social relations. Considers how the hospital was perceived, experienced and theorized and the importance of ethnicity, gender and class in Weyburn.

Montgomery, Phyllis. To Keep Close: Mothering Amidst Serious Mental Illness and Suffering.  Unpublished PhD thesis, McMaster University, 2003. Thesis discusses women with serious mental illness and their shared desire to mother as a strategy of being ‘normal’.

Murphy, Steven A.  Mental Health and the Workplace: A Multidisciplinary Examination of the Individual and Organizational Antecedents and Outcomes of Stress, Anxiety and Depressed Mood.  Unpublished PhD thesis, Carleton University, 1995. Thesis studies a financial services organization and company hierarchies and discusses the mental health of the employees, especially with regards to stress, anxiety and depression.

Murray, C. L. Unemployment and the mental health of Newfoundland women affected by the fishery closure. Unpublished Masters of Nursing thesis, Memorial University, 2000.

Nemiroff, R. Beyond Rehousing: Community integration of women who have experienced homelessness. Unpublished MA/PhD thesis, University of Ottawa, 2010.

Rogers, Scott. Down But Not Out: A Study of a Men’s Shelter From a Symbolic Interactionist Perspective. Unpublished MA thesis, University of Windsor, 1997. Thesis discusses men living in homeless shelters, detailing homelessness and poverty.

Scattolon, Y. Perceptions of depression and coping with depressive experiences among rural women in New Brunswick. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of New Brunswick, 1993.

Sethna, Christabelle. The Continent Man: The Ideal of Pure Manhood in the Self and Sex Series, 1897-1915.  Unpublished MA thesis, University of Toronto, 1989. Thesis discusses the late nineteenth and early twentieth century social construction of masculinity through books and religion. Focuses on literature aimed at upper- middle class Christian men and women.

Sethna, Christabelle. The Facts of Life: The Sex Instruction of Ontario Public School Children, 1900-1950. Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis: Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, 1995.

Smith, Kira. The Red Chair. Unpublished M.A. Research Project, Carleton University, 2018. Undergraduate reflection paper and novella employs creative writing alongside archival documents to reimagine to life of a female psychiatric patient at Brockville Asylum, Ontario over multiple decades throughout the first half of the twentieth century.

Strange, Carolyn. The Velvet Glove: Maternalistic Reform at the Andrew Mercer Ontario Reformatory for Females, 1874-1927. Unpublished M.S. Thesis: University of Ottawa, 1993.

Rhodes, A.E. Gender, type of mental disorder and use of outpatient mental health services. Unpublished PhD, University of Toronto, 1999.

Roberts, Jennifer K. “If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out”: Sterilization and the Policing of Female Sexuality in Twentieth Century Western Canada. Unpublished M.A. Thesis: University of Victoria, 1999.

Rogers, Scott. Down But Not Out: A Study of a Men’s Shelter From a Symbolic Interactionist Perspective. Unpublished MA thesis, University of Windsor, 1997. Thesis discusses men living in homeless shelters, detailing homelessness and poverty.

Thifault, Marie-Claude. Folie et déviance des femmes au Québec: 1901-1913. Thèse de maîtrise, Université du Québec à Montréal, 1994, 151 p.

Tully, Tracey Lynnn. On Being Homeless: Women’s Sense of Connection. Unpublished MScN thesis, University of Toronto, 1997. Thesis examines homeless women and their relationships with others. Includes personal narratives of women included in the study.

Vrooman, Tamara. The Wayward and the Feeble-Minded : Euthenics, Eugenics, and the Provincial Industrial Home for Girls, 1914-1929. M.A. Thesis: University of Victoria, 1994.

White, Kimberley-Mair. Negotiating Responsibility: Representations of Criminality and Mind- state in Canadian Law, Medicine and Society, 1920-1950. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Toronto, 2001.  Thesis discusses the social, cultural, medical, and legal processes that shaped ideas about criminality between 1920 and 1950 and the creation of psychiatric expertise as a form of power over ‘the other’, i.e. gender, race, economically disadvantaged.

Yakimchuk, Rachel. Geographical release patterns and characteristics of not criminally responsible accused persons discharged into the community: An environmental perspective. Unpublished MA, Simon Fraser University, 2005. Thesis traces where people labelled “not criminally responsible” go after they are released from the hospital and discusses their socio-economic situation.