Mental Health, Welfare Reliance, and Lone Motherhood

This paper explores the life circumstances and mental health experiences of welfare-reliant lone mothers, utilizing data from the Lone Mothers: Building Social Inclusion project, a Canada-wide research program. On the basis of qualitative interviews conducted with 43 welfare-reliant lone mothers living in Toronto, Ontario, we examine the conditions of their lives and the ways in which mental health, poverty, and single motherhood intersect. These intersections reveal the problematic nature of the traditional mental health system's response to these women. Required is a broader understanding of the ways that impoverished lone mothers’ mental health is structurally situated, and requires population-based rather than individualized responses.