Dr. Petrea Taylor
Dr. Petrea Taylor is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Nursing, University of New Brunswick, Moncton site. As an RN and clinical nurse specialist in the psychiatric and mental health field in the Moncton area for 20 years, Dr. Taylor’s focus was crisis intervention, suicidality, and client-centered interventions, such as partnering with clients to promote a culture of recovery and anti-stigma. While working as a clinical nurse specialist in Addictions and Mental Health, Horizon Health Network, Dr. Taylor completed an Interdisciplinary PhD (Nursing, Sociology, Philosophy), followed by a Post-Doctoral Fellowship. Her program of research is gender, violence, and mental health, specializing in suicidality and is currently conducting a study on women’s health promotion in the context of suicidal thoughts in partnership with the Canadian Mental Health Association. The Global Qualitative Nursing Research Journal awarded Dr. Taylor with the Best Paper 2020 Award for her study on help-seeking for suicidality in women who have left an abusive partner. ResearchNB awarded her with a Conference Presentation Awards in 2022 and 2023 for her study on suicide and health promotion. Teaching in both the undergraduate and graduate nursing programs, Petrea also earned two UNB Nursing Teaching Awards (2020 & 2023). Other research projects include men’s cumulative lifetime violence and health outcomes including heavy substance use. Dr. Taylor’s uses a critical inquiry approach examining dominant assumptions and systems that limit health capacity for marginalized populations.
Helping women who harm themselves is really hard: Exploring how to help through understanding.
Helping people who do things to harm themselves- heavy substance use, self-harm, suicide attempts - is hard. Knowledge of the negative outcomes and ongoing education on how to help still does not mean that health care providers can make people change. During her work as a clinical nurse specialist with Addiction and Mental Health, Horizon Health Network, changing chronic suicidality and self-harm, particularly in women, was the most difficult aspect of care among service providers.
Dr Petrea Taylor is an award-winning researcher and writer, having been awarded the best research paper in the Global Qualitative Nursing Research Journal 2020 and best Clinical Research Presentation at the Health Research Week Conference, ResearchNB 2023. Petrea’s work clinical nurse specialist provided a solid grounding for a clinical research position as an Associate Professor with the UNB Faculty of Nursing. Her research is about understanding what is going on with people struggling with the effects of trauma and violence to learn how to help better. The latest studies involve how women promote their health while living with suicidal thoughts. In the presentation, Petrea will explore ways that social factors influence the capacity to manage life when ending unbearable pain through substance use, suicidality, or other forms or self-harm seem like the only option. Gender is a social factor that plays a significant role in managing pain and impacts health care providers’ responses to this.
Petrea is excited to learn together with you about how to be better listeners and to think about what is really going on when helping people is really hard.