Cultural Sensitivity for Mental Health and Addiction Service Providers

Immigrants and refugees often face challenges adjusting to life in Canada. Sometimes, the challenges are poverty, language barriers, or difficulty finding adequate employment. Other times, it’s a lack of social support caused by distance from family and friends. It can also involve past trauma or settlement-related discrimination and exclusion. These difficulties can cause significant personal and family distress and can lead to mental health or addiction issues.

Navigating the Canadian health system can be challenging for newcomers. As well, because of the cultural complexity, for practitioners and service providers can be difficult to provide services to patients that are used to a different system, have different expectations and judge the Canadian systems through their own cultural lens. This leads to misunderstandings and misinterpretations of what would be the best way to deal with an issue, the diagnosis gave by the practitioner, and how to face the problem and prepare for the healing path.

Thanks to our expertise and know-how, we can offer training for health practitioners and mental health and addiction service providers in order to develop and implement a culturally sensitive lens to their professional practice. Benefits include the ability to better serve the increasing population of newcomers, prevent situations to become more severe and costly for the patients and the system and create a better environment for patients and staff members.