Research Viewpoint: How to address racism’s impacts on child and adolescent mental health in Canada

What you need to know

Systemic racism affects a wide variety of health outcomes. This includes the mental health of young people in Canada, spanning across access to care, experience of mental health services and outcomes of care. In Canada, there is no best practice framework that unifies research, education and clinical care for racialized youth. Coordinated efforts to collect race-based data are also lacking. In postgrad­uate medical education, a guide does not exist on how to implement anti-racism teaching and training relevant to child mental health in Canada. A blueprint is needed to improve services for racialized young people in Canada to develop and implement the following:

1. A funded and sustainable research agenda responsive to community expertise.
2. A Canadian child and adolescent task force focused on strategies in postgraduate education and continuing professional development.
3. Clinical parameters that improve access to, and experience of, care for Canadian racialized youth.

Read the full research viewpoint in English and French.

EENet's Research Viewpoint series provides opinions from experts in the field of mental health and addictions and are based on commentary or editorials published in peer-reviewed journals.

This Research Viewpoint is based on the article, “What’s race got to do with it? A proposed framework to address racism’s impacts on child and adolescent mental health in Canada” published in Journal of Canadian Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, in 2021.