Ongoing, Weekly: T.E.A.C.H Mental Health Workshop Series for Black Youth

Black Mental Health Week Events

Join us for a week of events focused on mental health and well-being within the Black community. We are offering workshops, discussions, and resources to raise awareness, reduce stigma and promote healing.  

Black Mental Health Week - Calendar of Events

Mental Health Workshop for Child and Youth: Ubuntu and Wellness: A Journey to Mental Health and Community Care

​Dates: Tuesday, March 4, 2025
Time: 6:00pm-7:00pm
Location: Online

NACCA Presents: Mental Health Workshop for Child and Youth: Ubuntu and Wellness: A Journey to Mental Health and Community Care
We invite children and youth, in grades 5-8, from the Black community to come and learn about and have a discussion regarding mental health and wellness through the lens of UBUNTU—an African philosophy emphasizing the interconnectedness of participants, community, reciprocity, and collective well-being. 

Grounded in culturally appropriate and trauma-informed principles, this interactive workshop encourages self-awareness, social responsibility, and the understanding that youth are both part of the solution and the challenge when it comes to mental well-being.
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Please here to register your youth for this event.

Strengthening Families: Educating Black Youth and Parents on Drug and Alcohol Awareness 

Dates: Wednesday, Mar 5, 2025
Time: 6:30pm-8:00pm
Location: Online

NACCA invites you to join us for an informative and empowering event designed to equip Black youth and their parents and caregivers with the knowledge and tools to address the challenges of addictions. Through engaging discussions and practical strategies, we’ll explore prevention, healthy choices, and open communication to strengthen families and support our youth in making positive decisions. Together, we can create a brighter, healthier future for our community.  

This session will be facilitated by Rachel Okoro, founder and Psychotherapy of Empathetic Minds Psychotherapy.

Together, we can create a brighter, healthier future for our youth. Click here to register

Reflections of  Resilience: A Mental Health Art Therapy Experience for the Black Youth and Adults

Dates: Friday, Mar 7, 2025
Time: 1:00pm-3:00pm (Seniors group) or 6:30pm-8:30pm (Youth and Adults)
Location: TBA (Newmarket)

NACCA invites you and family to the Reflections of  Resilience: Honouring Black Voices and Visions. A Mental Health Art Therapy Experience for the Black Community. Design personalized  reflection boards to honour Black wellness, culture and resilience while connecting through art.

The event is facilitated by Charmaine Johnson, Founder of The Village Creative Healing Community and Counsellor. All are welcome - no art experience needed! 

Please click here to register 

Breathe. Release. Renew - Breathwork Session - Healing  Racial Trauma Through the Power of the Breath 

Dates: Saturday, Mar 8, 2025
Time: 10:30am-12:30pm
Location: TBA (Newmarket)

NACCA invites you to experience the transformative power of Ubuntu Breathwork, a healing practice designed for the Black community. Through deep, intentional breathing, we will connect with our shared humanity, release stress, and promote inner peace. This session offers a safe space for reflection, healing, and empowerment, where we honor our roots and nourish our minds, bodies, and spirits.  

The session will be facilitated by Julie Thompson, the founder of Ubuntu Breathwork and Yoga. Julie is a certified breathwork facilitator and yoga teacher holding multiple certificates in mindfulness and meditation. Her approach to wellness is to treat the whole person – mind, body and soul.

Join us on a journey of collective healing and strength. Register here

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We ​provide quality mental health supports to members of the Black Community

Our services address a wide variety of issues ranging from trauma (sexual, physical and trauma related to immigration), depression, anxiety, worry, grief and stress, including societal stressors relating to the Social Determinants of Health (racism, poverty, housing, employment, family issues, etc.). We offer counselling support to diverse areas such as Black men’s mental health, caregiver support for parenting children and youth, seniors, wellness support for members of the Black 2SLGBTQ+ community, to name a few.

​Our network of therapists/counsellors work from an anti-oppressive and resisting anti-Black racism framework which encompasses both teaching and learning from clients about the different forms of oppression that occur simultaneously in their lives on a day-to-day basis. Our therapeutic model involves Healing Identity Based Trauma and Racial Trauma using EMDR in COLOUR and other cultural humility centred approaches, an integrative process involving Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Narrative Therapy, and therapy from a Recovery Model of Care. 

Through therapy, Black youth and families will:
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1. Play an active role in the development of their recovery model of care.
2. Engage in a process of personal empowerment which leads to increased self-awareness and clarity.
3. Engage in a highly effective journey to personal healing.
4. Develop a critical sense of self and belonging.
5. Gain identity-specific knowledge about the impact of mental wellbeing on interpersonal relationships.
6. Develop key strategies for dealing with individual and familial stress and anxiety.
7. Learn how to be one’s own advocate for mental wellness in community and country.

Research and Ethics Guide
File Size:	99 kb
File Type:	pdf

Download File

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Black Community Mental Wellness: The Way Forward

We are committed to providing high-quality mental health support tailored to the needs of the Black community. Understanding that Black Mental Health Matters, we emphasize that Representation Matters and Healing Matters. We offer FREE Mental Wellness Services, which include:

• Individual & group counselling sessions (3 -5 one-hour sessions)
• Workshops
• Recreational activities

Visit us at our location:
449 Eagle Street, Newmarket
Phone: (289) 763-3663
Email: [email protected]

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Mental Health Impact Since 2019

Our mental health program is one critical way that we show up for Black residents in Newmarket and beyond. We are committed to prioritizing opportunity, access, validation and healing for the community we serve. To do this, we have gathered a strong pool of culturally relevant and oppression-informed therapist from a variety of intersecting identities to whom we can connect residents.

​The program provides ongoing subsidized individual counselling and quarterly workshops for youth, parents and caregivers in York Region’s Black communities.

What The Literature Review Tell Us

1. 60% of Black individuals in Ontario are at increased risk of psychosis.
2. Literature on the health concerns and well-being of young Black women is almost non-existent in Canada.
3. There is a gap in mental health services to support Black mental health and wellness through an intersectional approach. 
4. Long standing stigma around accessing mental health supports means that individuals may be struggling silently.
5. There is a lack of culturally relevant treatment providers and Black therapists who take an African centred approach. 
6. Black individuals are more likely to qualify as low-income, experience unemployment and be uninsured, which presents as a barrier to accessing quality mental health services and support.
7. Negative experiences with the health care system reduces Black individuals' willingness to seek and receive care. (Article: All Booked Up: The Frustrations of Finding a Black Therapist)
8. Because of racial discrimination, Black youth are at greater risk for depression, anxiety, and other mental health struggles than their non-Black peers with suicide increasing at a faster rate for Black youth than any other racial group.
9. ​LGBTQIA+ Black youth’s identification with multiple marginalized identities can make them more susceptible to decreased mental health. (National institutes of Health)

• 
  Multigenerational Trauma
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  What Baton Are We Carrying?
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  The Blind Stigma

DONATE TO THE BLACK THERAPY FUND

"People don't tend to think of mental illness or disrupted mental wellness as the day-to-day experiences of racial microaggressions. They don't think of it as the panic attack that you have every time you enter a school or a workplace and you can't describe it but you know you have a visceral reaction. So because people don't recognize that and they think the world is just set up like that, and they just have to figure it out and like grin and bear it, they don't understand that what they're experiencing, potentially, is a form of racial trauma if you're in a Black body." -Kamilah Clayton, MSW, RSW, CBT Social Worker, Psychotherapist

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