Restorative storytelling: Using community learning for empowerment groups to advance mental health education and equity with immigrant communities
Project Lead(s)
Sophie Yohani, Priscilla Boakye, Josephine Wong
Team Members
Joseph Adu, Esther Olukayode (external link) , Elizabeth Onyango, Raliat Owolabi (external link) , Bukola Salami, Rade Zinaic (external link)
Newcomers are arriving at a time when Canada faces economic, health, and environmental crises, while employment, financial, housing, and food insecurity continue to disproportionately affect newcomers.
Objective
Building on Bridging Divides' vision to advance equity-based multidirectional whole-of-society integration, this project will take a community-centered approach to create bridges between mental health knowledge systems (i.e., existing models and cultural/Indigenous knowledge systems of wellbeing) to co-create mental health education (MHE) interventions and identify policy actions to enhance mental health equity for immigrants.
Research question(s)
- What do immigrant stakeholders identify as MHE needs?
- What are the key elements of an effective and culturally safe MHE intervention?
- What are the facilitators and barriers of engaging immigrant stakeholders in effective and equitable co-design of MHE intervention?
- What critical mental health policy actions do immigrant stakeholders identify?
Methodology
Guided by Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR), liberation psychology, and principles of adult transformative learning, this project will utilize knowledge synthesis and mixed methods data collection (i.e. group discussions and short questionnaires) methods.
Status
The project is ongoing. Literature review is currently in progress.
Expected completion date: September 2026
Key words
Immigrant mental health; mental health; mental health education; policy; storytelling
