Report of the Canadian Task Force on Mental Health Issues Affecting Immigrants and Refugees
1988

Background - Executive Summary - Chapter 1 - Chapter 2-6 - Chapter 7-9 - Chapter 10-11 - Chapter 12 Conclusion & Appendices

The 12-member Task Force was established by Health and Welfare Canada and Secretary of State, Multiculturalism to identify factors influencing the mental health of Canada's immigrants and refugees and to make recommendations regarding them. Over a two-year period, the Task Force carried out its mandate by reviewing the relevant academic literature, by inviting oral presentations and written submissions and by preparing a final report, the recommendations of which are presented below.

The Task Force concluded that, while moving from one country and culture to another inevitably entails stress, it does not necessarily threaten mental health. The mental health of immigrants and refugees becomes a concern primarily when additional risk factors combine with the stress of migration.

In Canada, negative public attitudes, separation from family and community, inability to speak English or French, and failure to find suitable employment arc among the most powerful predictors of emotional distress among migrants. Persons who arc adolescent or elderly at the time of migration and women from traditional cultures are also more likely to experience difficulties during resettlement.

Canada can exert considerable control over these risk-inducing forces. It can provide the "ounce of prevention" needed to ensure that most newcomers will have as much chance as Canadian-born persons of maintaining their ental well-being, despite the stress of migration.

As preventive mental health measures, the Task Force recommends that:

1. The Canada Employment and Immigration Commission (CEIC) develop a multilingual series of pre-migration orientation programs in collaboration with immigrant service agencies and ethno-cultural organizations for distribution in refugee camps and at Canadian embassies abroad.

2. CEIC expedite changes in admission criteria to accommodate a broader definition of family, and changes in admission procedures to accelerate the family reunification process.

3. CEIC, Health and Welfare and Secretary of State provide core funding to immigrant service agencies to guarantee their operations on a long-term basis.

4. Health and Welfare and Secretary of State encourage and support the development of seniors' groups and programs in immigrant service agencies, general community service agencies, and ethno-cultural organizations.

5. Health and Welfare, Secretary of State, and Status of Women Canada develop and provide multilingual educational materials on women's rights and roles in Canada for discussion at immigrant service agencies, general community service agencies and ethno-cultural organizations.

6. Health and Welfare and Secretary of State work with their provincial counterparts to ensure that the curricula and environments of schools, pre-schools, and daycare facilities reflect the cultural diversity of the children attending them.

7. Secretary of State, in cooperation with provincial ministries of education, encourage and support school boards to adopt multicultural and race relations policies similar to those that have already proven successful in Canada.

8. CEIC, Ministry of Communications, and Secretary of State increase public education regarding the benefits of cultural pluralism, the contributions of immigrants to Canadian society, the difficulties faced by newcomers, and the effects of prejudice on both victim and perpetrator.

9. CEIC enable all immigrants and refugees to have equal access to official language education whether or not they arc destined for the labour market. Basic training allowances must be available regardless of the immigration class of training applicants.

10. CEIC, in coordination with Secretary of State, expand and ensure the flexibility of official language training programs with respect to the level of mastery assumed, objectives of course content, duration of program, scheduling of instructional hours, and location of classes.

11. CEIC, Ministry of Labour and Secretary of State enter into negotiations with their provincial counterparts to provide criteria and guidelines for entry into professions and trades by persons trained outside of Canada.

Regarding remedial measures, the Task Force concluded that when immigrants and refugees require mental health care in Canada, they tend to seek it outside the conventional system, according to their own cultural values and beliefs. Mental health services delivered to migrants, frequently emergency and acute care services, often prove ineffective. Language and culture differences between practitioner and patient arc too great in many instances to achieve successful treatment.

It is not feasible to create "parallel" mental health services for each language and cultural group in Canada, and it is not needed. With encouragement and leadership of the federal government, especially Health and Welfare, each province can provide cross-culturally accessible mental health services with existing resources and a minimum of new dollars. The Task Force recommends that:

12. Health and Welfare establish a national advisory body to coordinate and monitor social, health, and mental health services to ethnic minorities, with input from professional associations, service administration, and immigrant service agencies.

13. Health and Welfare invite requests for proposals on the development of crosscultural training modules in education, family practice, nursing, psychiatry, psychology and social work.

14. Health and Welfare, Secretary of State and their provincial counterparts encourage institutions of higher learning to identify cross-cultural education as a priority, particularly for students of education, medicine, nursing, psychiatry, psychology and social work.

15. Health and Welfare and Secretary of State encourage all funders of social and health services to require that organizations applying for funds provide evidence of efforts to make their services to ethnic minorities accessible, and to provide evaluations of their effectiveness.

16. Health and Welfare identify immigrants and refugees as well as multicultural concerns among its priority areas for Health Promotion contributions, research and National Welfare grants, and other funded activities.

17. Health and Welfare, in collaboration with immigrant service agencies and ethnocultural organizations, develop multilingual educational materials on the psychological consequences of migration and the resources for mental health care. Health and Welfare should provide these materials to provincial ministries of health and immigrant service agencies for dissemination through front-line service providers and ethnic media.

18. Health and Welfare and its provincial counterparts encourage all social, health, and mental health service agencies to increase their hiring of ethnic minority staff by adopting equal employment opportunity policies.

19. Health and Welfare and Secretary of State encourage the admissions committees of social, health and mental health service training programs to recognize as assets fluency in a non-official language and the intention to work with clients who speak that language.

20. Health and Welfare encourage provincial mental health services to employ mental health practitioners at major immigrant service agencies.

21. Health and Welfare, in collaboration with provincial ministries of health and immigrant service agencies, develop a curriculum for training interpreters used by mental health services. Immigrant service agencies and provincial ministries of health should be provided with this curriculum for use in classes supported by Health and Welfare.

22. Health and Welfare support research and health promotion initiatives to define the psychological consequences of torture, and to develop effective treatment programs for torture victims and their families.

23. Health and Welfare encourage provincial mental health services to give special consideration to the funding of ethno-specific rehabilitation and reintegration facilities.

The Task Force recognizes that the costeffectiveness and ultimate success of any given preventive or remedial measure depends heavily on the knowledge and experience on which it is based. The need for accurate, empirical research findings, for controlled program evaluations, and for the coordinated monitoring of information and activity arc noted throughout the report. It is therefore recommended that:

24. CEIC, Health and Welfare and Secretary of State establish at least three centres of excellence across Canada for research on issues affecting migrant mental health.

25. CEIC, Health and Welfare and Secretary of State establish at least three centres of excellence across Canada for cross-cultural training.

26. CEIC, Health and Welfare and Secretary of State establish a single, computerized information centre to collect, coordinate and disseminate the results of research and evaluations as well as descriptions of service and training programs directed to migrants and ethnic minorities in Canada.

27. Health and Welfare and Secretary of State create a national body to advise on and monitor the implementation of the Task Force recommendations.

In implementing these measures to address the mental health needs of immigrants and refugees, Canada will not only serve its own best interests; it will also affirm its status as a caring nation.

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Background - Executive Summary - Chapter 1 - Chapter 2-6 - Chapter 7-9 - Chapter 10-11 - Chapter 12 Conclusion & Appendices

Virtual Library		Updated February 09, 2004