Tea & Toast: Exploring encounters of care through community-specific mental health and addiction peer support in the Eskasoni First Nation

Abstract

This work explores encounters of care between service users and providers at Eskasoni Mental Health Services’ Crisis and Referral Centre, established in 2010, in the Eskasoni First Nation located in Unama’ki (Cape Breton, Nova Scotia). The community has experienced the devastating gaps in service created by the challenges associated with rural mental health service delivery and the jurisdictional grey zones between the provincial and federal governments’ responsibilities for delivering health care. The centre offers 24/7 in-person or telephone support in English or Mi’kmaq to community residents and employs a peer-support model. This thesis is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the spring of 2018. It situates the affective and visceral impacts of these encounters of care against the backdrop of ever-shifting policy landscapes and precarious funding schemes. It argues that those seeking care and the multiple formal and informal caregivers/service providers constitute a web of relations.