The Department of Health Sciences is pleased to announce the next seminar in our 2021-22 Health Sciences Seminar Series.
Black Women’s Experiences with Mental Illness, Help-Seeking & Coping in the Halifax Regional Municipality: A Study Conducted to Inform the Nova Scotia Sisterhood Initiative
March 17, 2022 12:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada) | Virtual event on Zoom
| Register Here |
Abstract
Over the last few years, a body of research has been emerging that is examining the many causal factors for Black women’s mental illness, including genetic factors, state violence and other structural inequities and oppressions
based on race, gender identity, sexual orientation, citizenship, socio-economic status and other identities. They provide evidence that Black women’s structural location at the intersection of those identities and oppressions are often experienced as trauma and, therefore, puts them at an increased risk for mental illness. In this presentation, Dr. Ingrid Waldron takes up these issues by sharing findings from a study she conducted on diverse Black women’s experiences with mental illness and help-seeking, which is currently being used to inform the Sisterhood Initiative, a health service for Black women in the Halifax Regional Municipality. The study had four main objectives:
- To examine Black women’s experiences with mental illness, including how their experiences related to race, culture, gender identity, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, citizenship, disability, and age impact their mental well-being.
- To learn about Black women’s beliefs about the causes of mental illness.
- To identify Black women’s help seeking behaviours and
• To obtain Black women’s suggestions for how the Sisterhood Initiative can address Black women’s mental health needs.
About the Speaker
Dr. Ingrid Waldron was born in Montreal, Quebec to Trinidadian parents. She is Professor and HOPE Chair in Peace and Health in the Global Peace and Social Justice Program in the Department of History, Faculty of Humanities at McMaster University. From 2008 to 2021, she was a Professor in the Faculty of Health at Dalhousie University. Dr. Waldron’s research, teaching and community advocacy work focus on the structural and environmental determinants of health and mental health disparities in Black, Indigenous, immigrant and refugee communities in Canada, including environmental racism, climate inequities, mental illness, and COVID-19. She is the author of There’s Something in the Water: Environmental Racism in Indigenous and Black Communities (Fernwood Publishing), which was turned into a 2020 Netflix documentary of the same name and was co-produced by Waldron, actor Elliot Page, Ian Daniel, and Julia Sanderson and directed by Page and Daniel. Her book received the 2020 Society for Socialist Studies Errol Sharpe Book Prize and the 2019 Atlantic Book Award for Scholarly Writing. She is the recipient of several other awards, including Research Canada’s Leadership in Advocacy Award (Individual Category), Dalhousie University’s President’s Research Excellence Award – Research Impact, the Dalhousie Faculty of Health Early Career Research Excellence Award, and Springtide Collective’s Advocate of the Year Award. Dr. Waldron is the founder and Director of the Environmental Noxiousness, Racial Inequities and Community Health Project (The ENRICH Project), the co-founder and Co-Director of the Canadian Coalition for Environmental and Climate Justice (CCECJ), and the co-founder and past Vice-President of Rural Water Watch, which conducts water testing projects in marginalized rural Nova Scotian communities. Her research and community advocacy work inspired the federal private members bill a National Strategy Respecting Environmental Racism and Environmental Justice (Bill C-230). She is currently writing her next book titled From the Enlightenment to Black Lives Matter: The Impact of Racial Trauma on Mental Health in Black Communities, which will trace experiences of racial trauma in Black communities in North America and the UK from the colonial era to the present day