This course explores the mental health promotion and harm reduction needs of Black individuals, families, and communities in Canada — especially focusing on the mental health status of five key demographic segments of the population: Black women and girls, Black children and youth, Black males, the Black elderly, as well as Black newcomers and refugees. Longstanding disease patterns and illness experiences as well as recent post-pandemic developments will be examined.

Participants will analyze the historic and/or inter-generational influences of African and Diasporic cultures on Black resiliency and protective factors as well as risk factors associated with social determinants of health (SDOH) and systemic anti-Black racism experienced in interactions with health system and structures. Intersections of racial and culturally rooted stigmas and its impact on help-seeking behaviours will be analyzed. Mental health promotion and harm reduction needs, and available options, will be examined along with the essential psychological and cultural resources needed for effective public health and community-based services. Pathways from public stereotypes, microaggressions to diminished self-concept and self-stigmatization will be explored.

Mental health is viewed as an essential resource for effective social functioning and mental health care as a human right. Both are effectively undermined by systemic racism as well as racialized social determinants of health. The meaning of mental health and well-being as well as population-based health, mental illness, and disease patterns will be explored in sessions 1 to 4. Sessions 5 to 7 will examine particular sub-population patterns of addictive and mood disorders, psychosis, and dementia that impact Black communities. Sessions 8 to 10 will explore crisis interventions and prevention, as well as public policies, required to address health needs and reduce the racialized mental health disparities experienced by Black communities across Canada.