Research

Dr. Fontaine’s primary research interests lie within the area of Indigenous mental health. Currently, she is seeking to understand historical, cultural, psychological, and sociopolicial factors associated with Indigenous well-being. Much of this work is intended to inform future applied clinical intervention research, in which she plans to develop, pilot, and evaluate group-based clinical services designed for Indigenous women in the perinatal period.

Second, Dr. Fontaine has long recognized that individual-level and societal-level health are closely interrelated, and that for individuals to be well, the larger social systems that they are part of must also be healthy. For this reason, much of Dr. Fontaine’s previous work has focused on understanding people’s attitudes toward social justice issues, intergroup relations, solidarity, and reconciliation. Within this secondary area of research, Dr. Fontaine works as a collaborator on the Canadian Reconciliation Barometer Project, a multi-disciplinary program that seeks to measure and track progress toward reconciliation in Canada.

Finally, Dr. Fontaine also has research interests within the area of trauma-informed care and perinatal mental health, with a focus on developing group-based interventions to support pregnant people and new mothers experiencing depression. She conducts quantitative, qualitative, and archival studies in her work.