Folk arts centre expands mental health services for newcomers
The stress, anxiety and isolation of moving to a new country can be extremely difficult, particularly for people from cultures where mental health issues continue to be stigmatized.
“There’s something called the immigrant effect,” said Niagara Folk Arts Multicultural Centre executive director Emily Kovacs.
“Most newcomers, even if they’re not refugees leaving war-torn countries, study after study shows that immigrants come to come here healthier and as they stay with us, their health declines,” she said.
“When they’re staying in a host country for a long period of time, health issues such as depression and other disorders kick in and it’s directly related to isolation.”
Kovacs said stigma associated with mental illness, particularly in countries that many immigrants left behind, also prevent them from comfortably speaking about the struggles they may face.
“If we don’t get the settlement portion right, if you come to Canada and you’re not connected to a settlement agency or a community … there’s a direct correlation between isolation and depression and other disorders.”
Kovacs said the folk arts centre implemented a program for clients shortly after she joined the team in 2018 called Bridging Barriers, to de-stigmatize mental health, provide connections among newcomers to prevent isolation that can lead to disorders, and to provide one-on-one counselling for people in their own languages.
While the initial program was “super successful” with about 400 clients a year using the service, Kovacs said some clients still faced language barriers getting the help they needed in the community.
As a result, she said, the organization recruited a “health navigator” to help clients transfer from the programs offered by the folk arts centre to mainstream mental health services.
“We’re hoping that will have an impact,” she said.
Meanwhile, Kovacs said the folk arts centre has expanded its program in the hope of reaching more of the roughly 2,600 newcomers the agency assists annually.
With funding from United Way, the agency has added a mental health support chat-line for newcomers that offers support across the region in Arabic, Spanish and Mandarin — the three most spoken languages among newcomers at the centre — in addition to English.
She said the free service that provides crisis intervention, emotional support and access to other resources allows people to remain anonymous.
People can access the service at folk-arts.ca/programs/mental-health, or by calling the centre at 905-685-6589.
Mental health support workers will be available each week on Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays.