Gail Nord enjoys taking early morning walks in Minnehaha Park near her home. A few years ago, she began to notice the number of unhoused people who would spend the night there, then gather near the pavilion in the morning.
“I would just go over there and chat, not with any goal or anything, but just to say, 'How are you doing?’” says Nord. “It was such a great experience, and I really developed a respect for the people who endure that kind of a life.”
This feeling of respect and compassion compelled Nord, a Master of Professional Studies in Integrated Behavioral Health (IBH) student, to formally explore how she could make a difference. She began to look into the challenges of providing mental health and substance use treatment to unhoused people, researching their past experiences with mental health and/or substance use treatment. She found that roughly 80 percent of them were currently experiencing mental health and substance use issues, so past treatment methods had not been entirely effective. She wondered why treatment hadn’t worked, and what could be done better in providing that treatment.
“I think that all of us, given certain life circumstances, could end up in that kind of a dilemma,” she says. “And once you're in that dilemma, it's hard as hell to get out of it.”
Nord reached out to faculty member Fiyyaz Karim to see if he would mentor her in her research and guide her through the University’s Institutional Review Board (IRB) process (The IRB reviews research projects involving human participants.).
"She connected with community resources because of the immersive experiences in class," Karim says. "She took it upon herself to start donating both time and resources to these agencies … and sought out an internship at the Indian Health Board where she has worked further with the unhoused."
This research was not a required part of her IBH master’s degree, says Karim, but “she has a passion for advocacy and social justice for marginalized communities.”
During one project Nord researched Camp Nenookaasi, an encampment of unhoused individuals that began in the East Phillips neighborhood of Minneapolis (it has since been removed by the city).
Accompanied by classmates who served as scribes, Nord interviewed 20 residents, many of whom were Indigenous. “I decided on the number because that's the number of Visa gift cards I could afford,” she says. “Given the interest of the residents, I could have probably done a hundred interviews. It was a wonderful experience.”
But it wasn’t easy at first. Nord, a white woman, was initially met with skepticism by camp organizers. “But once I told (them) that I really wanted to learn from the people that were living in the encampment with a goal of providing better care, they were all in.”
What was confirmed through her research is that “pretty much everyone who has substance use issues has mental health issues,” and that substance use is most often secondary.
Some substance use is situational, but much of it is self-medication for untreated mental health conditions.
“You need to prioritize mental health treatment while working on the substance use,” Nord says. “I think it would be absolutely awesome to bring therapy to the people where they are. I have this vision … of an old Winnebago that's refitted with an office in the back, really cozy and comfy.”
It may come as a surprise that counseling is not Nord’s first career. She studied forest management as an undergraduate and worked for several years in that field until she had children.
She later earned a Master of Divinity and served as a chaplain in a men's maximum security prison conducting individual and small group counseling.
“I started an LADC (license alcohol and drug counselor) program when I was working at the prison because I saw the hideous impact that drugs were having on these men. It devastates lives, and I thought, this would be a good adjunct to my credentials.”
Eventually she switched to counseling families and patients in hospice care. She returned to the University of Minnesota where she graduated in December to embark on this third career.
“I'm going to be 71 this year,” says Nord. “My goal is to work another 10 years.”
See the original version of this story at the College of Continuing & Professional Studies
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