Mental Health Strategy Community Engagement Survey Results 

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 that we can connect residents to.
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​The program will provide weekly culturally relevant support group sessions, ongoing subsidized individual counselling and monthly workshops for youth, parents and caregivers in York Region’s Black communities.

What The Literature Review Tell Us

1. 60% of Blacks 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.

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  Multigenerational Trauma
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  What Baton Are We Carrying?
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  Reclaiming Black Mental Health

"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