The Saskatchewan Mental Hospital at Weyburn has played a significant role in the history of psychiatric services, mental health research, and providing care in the community. Its history provides a window to the changing nature of mental health services over the 20th century.Built in 1921, Saskatchewan Mental Hospital was considered the last asylum in North America and the largest facility of its kind in the British Commonwealth. A decade later the Canadian Committee for Mental Hyg...

British social reformer Robert Owen once declared that "man is the creature of circumstances." A century and a half later, his famous words still ring true. While many adopt a fatalist approach, believing that their lot in life is inevitable, in fact a number of highly complex social factors determine the outcome of our socioeconomic status and integration into society. It may seem unfair, but the conditions into which we are born largely determine the various courses that our lives take. In...

Disability exists in the shadows of public awareness and at the periphery of policy making. People with disabilities are, in many respects, missing from the theories and practices of social rights, political participation, employment, and civic membership. Absent Citizens brings to light these chronic deficiencies in Canadian society and emphasizes the effects that these omissions have on the lives of citizens with disabilities.Drawing together elements from feminist studi...

In this book, sociology professor John F. Conway looks at families past, present and future and examines the changing nature of family. Figures from the first decade of the new millennium tell us that one marriage in two may well end in divorce. Conway considers the implications of divorce, the impact of social changes on men, women and children, and suggests how these issues might be better addressed through family policy. The new edition addresses the harsh new reality facing Canadian fa...

In her latest book, sociologist Diane Crocker challenges the popular perception that crime in Canada is on the rise and argues that public opinion is becoming a bigger barrier to achieving justice than the actual extent of crime. Using the most current data available, her research reveals how we can better assess the effectiveness of crime control policies, as well as our own responses to crime, while promoting democratic values such as equity and accountability.

Fostering Nation? Canada Confronts Its History of Childhood Disadvantage explores the missteps and the promise of a century and more of child protection efforts by Canadians and their governments. It is the first volume to offer a comprehensive history of what life has meant for North America’s most disadvantaged Aboriginal and newcomer girls and boys.Gender, class, race, and (dis)ability are always important factors that bear on youngsters’ access to resources. State fost...

Recent debate around the potential decriminalization of marijuana, along with a growing perception that illicit drug use is on the rise, has brought the role of the state in controlling intoxication to the forefront of public discussion. Until now, however, there has been little scholarly consideration of the legal and social regulation of drug use in Canada. In The Real Dope, Edgar-Andre Montigny brings together leading scholars from a diverse range of fields—including history, l...

In this new addition to the 'Debating Law' series, Emily Jackson and John Keown re-examine the legal and ethical aspects of the euthanasia debate.Emily Jackson argues that we owe it to everyone in society to do all that we can to ensure that they experience a 'good death'. For a small minority of patients who experience intolerable and unrelievable suffering, this may mean helping them to have an assisted death. In a liberal society, where people's moral views differ, we should not...

This wide-ranging book shows why Paul Longmore is one of the most respected figures in disability studies today. Understanding disability as a major variety of human experience, he urges us to establish it as a category of social, political, and historical analysis in much the same way that race, gender, and class already have been. The essays here search for the often hidden pattern of systemic prejudice and probe into the institutionalized discrimination that affects the one in five Amer...

This is the story of one of the most far-reaching human endeavors in history: the quest for mental well-being. From its origins in the eighteenth century to its wide scope in the early twenty-first, this search for emotional health and welfare has cost billions. In the name of mental health, millions around the world have been tranquilized, institutionalized, psycho-analyzed, sterilized, lobotomized and even euthanized. Yet at the dawn of the new millennium, reported rates of depression an...

Adolescence, like childhood, is more than a biologically defined life stage: it is also a sociohistorical construction. The meaning and experience of adolescence are reformulated according to societal needs, evolving scientific precepts, and national aspirations relative to historic conditions. Although adolescence was by no means a “discovery” of the early twentieth century, it did assume an identifiably modern form during the years between the Great War and 1950.The Dominion ...

It's Not That Simple: Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide presents the reader with the knowledge and understanding of physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia and how it will greatly impact our society.