Centering Black Youth Wellbeing
This virtual community of practice explores ways to center the wellbeing of Black young people and... View more
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Intersectional and Advocacy Strategies for Supporting Mental Health Wellbeing
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Intersectional and Advocacy Strategies for Supporting Mental Health Wellbeing
I found this lecure so engaging as it spoke to my belief that mental health supports and services often do a disservice to clients by not incorporating an analysis of the ways in which social inequalities and structural oppression plays a role in the rise and preservation of mental health disorders.
I have been fortunate that in my experience in the social work field I have worked with a diverse range of populations, mainly with low income and racialized adults and youth. I initially began in the mental health field as a volunteer responder at a crisis centre where I provided listening support, empathy and connection to people in distress while also conducting assessments for risk of suicide. A common feature I began to notice in talking with people was the fact that financial barriers both produced and worsened prevalence of mental health symptoms. For example, many people shared receiving welfare as income that was not enough to survive on. A lack of adequate housing (often overcrowded, in need of repairs), combined with inability to afford basic necessities and often minimal or non existing social supports caused many to feel hopeless. A lot of what is highlighted as forms self care (e.g. activities or hobbies) is often impossible for low income persons who cannot afford basic necessities, let alone books, music, candles or entertainment streaming.
While mainly working with adults, I have also worked within youth mental health at a nation-wide counselling service for children and youth in Canada. Here, I used similar skills to provide empathy, validation and counselling strategies to support children, youth, and young adults. What was different in working with youth is challenging learned behaviours or beliefs from parents or other adult figures that conflict with the child’s identity or experiences. Youth often express feeling isolated or misunderstood from family or caregivers and felt stuck remaining in an environment that conflicts with their own values and identities.
My role as a counsellor prevented me from being able to talk more casually with youth, but in my role as a outreach worker I found that using more casual language or talking to youth from the position of a mentor helped to build a relationship of trust that allowed me to engage in difficult conversations with youth, such as identifying and regulating emotions, identifying instances of family abuse, understanding mental health and the need for self care, setting healthy relationships and boundaries with friends and romantic relationships, as well as education about civil rights and community development. As a youth worker, my position was one of outreach and I travelled to many community centres in the Scarborough region of Toronto, which is comprised of a large Black and immigrant populations. In my work with youth, both as a mental health counsellor and youth worker, I tried to engage youth in conversations of social inequalities by challenging stigmas of mental health, identifying and promoting individual strengths, while understanding how identity and experiences influence the availability of social supports, including potential supports outside of the family (e.g. “found family” with teachers, trusted adults, friends and peers, or other community members).
I really believe that the youth of today have come so far and have the knowledge and skills to advance their goals and deserve support from the generations that have come before them to remove any barriers that exist.
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Thank you, Candace for sharing your reflections on this particular module and your experience working with Black youth, and youth in general. I just listened to Dr. Edwards’ module 3.4. and I found myself revisiting some of my clinical work with Black youth, as a mental health counsellor in a children and youth mental health agency in the GTA. I do remember vividly how a young Black person responded to me asking about their experiences with discrimination and racism; he told me “You are the first counsellor who is asking about those, instead of making assumptions about them.” When I asked him what difference it made to him, he responded something along those lines: that he felt he could finally tell someone what kind of experiences he had been enduring, and what kind of distress he had been experiencing on a daily basis due to fact of being Black. He felt he could finally tell those stories and feeling that they could be heard, rather than having to carry them around within himself, in silence, hiding them from plain view. That the hiding of those stories in itself was painful and engendered anger toward his situation and ultimately himself. What ultimately happened in our work was twofold: on one end, listening to the specifics of his experiences with racism and oppression, we could identify together the targets of his self-advocacy and my case advocacy; secondly, the shame of carrying around his pain in silence started to be chipped away at, with the significant outcome of lifting self-loathing and hopelessness. Eventually, a full recognition of the intersections of poverty, race and disability brought us to push to connect only with the relevant community services and resources, in a collaborative manner, rather than blanket referrals. I want to share this interaction to name the power of choosing a decentered position, and of choosing to ask, explicitly and directly, about experiences of oppression in day-to-day life. Youth knows, suffers, and can name their burden. Advocacy can then be built together, from within and all around.
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