Lost in the Woods: Traversing Rural Children's Mental Health Care is a 52-minute documentary film produced by Dr. Hoi Cheu of the Film Studies Program in the Department of English at Laurentian University. It was developed from the 2-year CRaNHR research study "Rural Perspective on Continuity of Care: Pathways and Barriers to Care for Children with Emotional and Behavioural Disorders". The research was led by Dr. Katherine Boydell from the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Dr. Raymond W. Pong, Research Director at CRaNHR, and Dr. Kate Tilleczek, CRaNHR Faculty Investigator and Professor in the Department of Sociology at Laurentian University. It studied 30 families in rural Ontario.

Lost in the Woods was initially conceived as a knowledge transfer tool. However, the researchers decided to "let the families have a voice", so the film became a medium for the families to communicate their emotional experience, which had been de-emphasized in the sociological research. When the families told their stories through the camera, the human aspects of storytelling turned the qualitative case study into a unique drama about care, struggle, persistence, and the triumph of parental love.

Download Lost in the Woods (127 MB)



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