Mental Health and the Immigrant Experience

Discrimination in a new home can be worse than pre-migration trauma.

Racism and white supremacy inform much of how we understand mental health stigma in immigrant communities. Prior to migration, immigrants live in a context with well-established social capital and cultural networks. There is a social landscape of support, relationships, and resources to help navigate life challenges and transitions. In this context, psychological distress is experienced within this network and care is sought out through social, cultural, and spiritual means.

Once in Canada, immigrants are displaced from this rich landscape of support and resources while facing new and unprecedented challenges, such as racism and discrimination. Discriminatory immigration policies also prevent individuals with a disability or who have mental health needs from immigrating to Canada or once they arrive risk being deported due to their conditions.

For many who arrive 'healthy' they experience disparities in access to mental health information, quality care, culturally competent and racially diverse practitioners, and overall mental and physical health outcomes. When there is misinformation or stigma about mental health in White communities, there is resources allocated to a public health campaign to build awareness and develop resources. Immigrant communities face barriers in access culturally competent and linguistically diverse public health resources, education, and awareness programs.

For immigrant in need of mental health care, finding appropriate care is challenging and practitioners might not dismiss your concerns. For example, immigrant and racialized women reporting IPV have less access to critical resources than white women which results in further harm. Also when immigrants seek care they risk facing more racism, being misdiagnosed, the involvement of child welfare agencies, being institutionalized, or forcibly held in hospital. Some immigrants are also encouraged not to seek care within mainstream institutions from their communities due to these risks. Many might rely on spiritual communities out of necessity as competent and equitable mental health services are not available.

In this complex and challenging context, white people use the concept of 'stigma' to suggest there is something inherent to immigrants, their culture, traditions, norms that attaches 'shame' to mental health issues or 'disapproves' of seeking care. Also this narrative pathologizes cultural differences in distress expression and care seeking. Many immigrants have also internalized racist and white supremicist language about immigrants and this deficit view of their communities. Stigma is a result of systemic racism.

Lab Refugee Research

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