Therapeutic Jurisprudence in Health Research

• Published in: Qualitative Health Research
• Main Authors: Ferrazzi, Priscilla, Krupa, Terry
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: SAGE Publications 2014
• Subjects: Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health; Arctic
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1049732314560197; http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1049732314560197; http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full-xml/10.1177/1049732314560197

Studies that seek to understand and improve health care systems benefit from qualitative methods that employ theory to add depth, complexity, and context to analysis. Theories used in health research typically emerge from social science, but these can be inadequate for studying complex health systems. Mental health rehabilitation programs for criminal courts are complicated by their integration within the criminal justice system and by their dual health-and-justice objectives. In a qualitative multiple case study exploring the potential for these mental health court programs in Arctic communities, we assess whether a legal theory, known as therapeutic jurisprudence, functions as a useful methodological theory. Therapeutic jurisprudence, recruited across discipline boundaries, succeeds in guiding our qualitative inquiry at the complex intersection of mental health care and criminal law by providing a framework foundation for directing the study’s research questions and the related propositions that focus our analysis.