Meaning Exploration and Homeless People: Client and Staff Requirements for Programming at The Ottawa Mission

Abstract

In Canada there are an estimated 35,000 people experiencing homelessness on any given night and 235,000 people experiencing homelessness each year. The number of people in Ottawa using emergency overnight shelters in 2018 was 7937, an increase of 6.8% over 2017. In addition to experiencing a range of physical ailments, between 23% and 74% of homeless people report having some type of mental illness or problem. While community-based approaches to mental health interventions for homeless people are effective, many neither address nor explore the concept of “meaning” and its relevance to their lives. Meaning may be important for the experience of mental health, as well as substance use intervention, and has also been found to be linked to resilience, itself a contributor to positive mental health. Those programs that do address this topic have not engaged homeless people in the development of such programs, which can be detrimental to program use and effectiveness. By using a stakeholder-informed knowledge translation-integrated (KTI) model, the present study seeks to integrate learnings from research on mental health interventions with homeless people, community-based and participatory action principles, and the importance of meaning to well-being with the recommendations of the Mental Health Commission of Canada. Using a consensual qualitative research methodology, a needs assessment for the development of a meaning exploration session for clients of The Ottawa Mission’s Day Program was conducted based on KTI standards. Based on the stakeholder-generated general themes that emerged from the research, meaning exploration sessions can and should be created in Day Program, would likely be helpful and motivating to clients, and clients stated that they would attend such sessions.