Katherine Lee Successfully Defends her Doctoral Dissertation
On August 15th, Katherine Lee successfully defended her PhD dissertation entitled “Expanding Access to Publicly-Funded Psychotherapy: A Comparative Policy Analysis in Ontario and British Columbia”.
Katherine argued that the timing of the introduction and the overall scope of new publicly available mental health policies in two Canadian provinces was due to a combination of factors, including changing ideas of mental health, existing policies legacies, policy learning and policy leadership by key individuals. Responding to the evolving mental health crisis associated with depression and anxiety, policy actors mostly outside of government in BC responded quickly with a less comprehensive program that was similar to one that was developed and in place in the UK. In contrast, Ontario moved much later and adopted a more comprehensive program that relied upon later iterations of the UK policy and was driven by key leadership from within the Ministry of Health in the province. She concluded that mental health, like many other complex and complicated policy spaces, is best understood from a variety of theoretical angles and that policy change in these kinds of spaces requires a multi-pronged approach.
Katherine’s defence was chaired by Dr. A. Shafiqul Huque, and her supervisory committee consisted of Dr. Greg Flynn (co-supervisor), Dr. Peter Graefe (co-supervisor) and Dr. Katie Boothe. Dr. David Snow (University of Guelph) was the external examiner.
Katherine is employed with the Town of Oakville as a Corporate Strategy Research Analyst.
Congratulations, Katherine!
PhD Defenses
