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The Impact of Language on the Mental Health of Black Quebecers

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Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Quebec’s English-speaking Black community finds itself at the intersection of racial and linguistic discrimination, which presents challenges to mental wellness. The present study aims to add necessary detail to the conversations surrounding racism and mental health in Canada while including language as a determinant of health and intersecting element affecting the wellbeing of English-speaking Black Quebecers. We recruited 531 Black adults who are currently living in Quebec to complete a survey on various community-relevant items, including their mental and physical health, their experiences of discrimination, and barriers to accessing mental healthcare. Our analyses revealed that English-speaking participants experience more discrimination across all types and report more barriers to mental healthcare and lower mental health than their French-speaking counterparts. Furthermore, we found that language also had a mediated effect on mental health through discrimination and barriers to mental healthcare. Our study adds to the sparse race-based and intersectional literature about Black people in Canada and substantiates a mechanism by which language affects mental health by exposing Black Quebecers to more discrimination and thus higher barriers to care.

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Notes

  1. For detailed tables on participant characteristics, see Appendix 1.

  2. English-speaking participants reported significantly more language (p < 0.001) and gender-based (p = 0.02) discrimination than French-speaking participants. For more information on statistically significant differences on each discrimination type between language groups, see Appendix 2.

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Funding

This work was supported by Health Canada Grant (#255598) and a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Grant of Canada (#254213) to Richard Koestner.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada

    Nmesoma Nweze, Xiaoyan Fang & Richard Koestner

  2. Black Community Resource Center, Montreal, QC, Canada

    John Davids & Xiaoyan Fang

  3. New York University, New York, NY, USA

    Anne Holding

Authors
  1. Nmesoma Nweze
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  2. John Davids
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  3. Xiaoyan Fang
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  4. Anne Holding
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  5. Richard Koestner
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation and data collection were performed by John Davids and Xiaoyan Fang. Statistical analyses were conducted by Nmesoma Nweze. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Nmesoma Nweze and all authors commented on versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Nmesoma Nweze.

Ethics declarations

Ethics Approval

This study was performed in line with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki. Approval was granted by the Ethics Committee of McGill University.

Consent to Participate

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Appendices

Appendix 1 Participant Characteristic Tables

See Tables

Table 1 Age and generational status
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Table 2 Gender
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Table 3 Total discrimination and barriers to mental health services
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Table 4 Self-rated mental and physical health
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Appendix 2 Contingency Tables and Chi-Squared Analyses of Each Type of Discrimination

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Table 5 Racial discrimination
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Table 6 Ethno-cultural
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Table 7 Language
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Table 8 Gender
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Table 9 Religion
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Table 10 Sex
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Nweze, N., Davids, J., Fang, X. et al. The Impact of Language on the Mental Health of Black Quebecers. J. Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities 10, 2327–2337 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40615-022-01412-5

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