Exploring Language Barriers as a Social Determinant of Mental Health among English-Speaking Post-Secondary Students in Quebec: A Scoping Review and Policy Analysis.

In recent years, there has been an increase in the prevalence of mental health related problems among post-secondary students in Canadian higher education institutions. One important factor that can negatively impact the delivery of mental health services at these institutions is the language barrier. This issue is of prominent significance in a linguistically diverse society such as Quebec, where previous research indicates that linguistic minorities encounter significant obstacles in accessing equitable healthcare services. 

While previous research has investigated the impact of language barriers on health care access and the quality of care among Quebec's linguistic minorities, there is a paucity of research regarding mental health services available to English-speaking students in Quebec’s higher education institutions and their experiences accessing such services. This scoping review seeks to fill this gap by mapping the existing academic and grey literature on language barriers and access to mental health services among English-speaking post-secondary students in Quebec’s colleges and universities. This study is guided by the following research questions: 

1. How do language barriers create inequities in access to mental health services for English- speaking post-secondary students in Quebec’s higher education institutions? 

2. What policies and resources are in place at higher education institutions in Quebec to facilitate English-speaking students' access to mental health services? 

3. What policy interventions can be implemented to enhance access to mental health services for English-speaking students attending higher education institutions in Quebec? 

This study will provide insights and policy recommendations to foster a more equitable and inclusive mental health service delivery in Quebec's higher education institutions. 

Japanese immigrants in Québec: Experience of health information access during the COVID-19 pandemic

Our study seeks to understand the effect of language on the dissemination of critical pandemic public health information in the Japanese immigrant community in Québec. As this group is not the only small community struggling with linguistic barriers on information access, the current study can serve as a model for investigating similar kinds of questions in other small linguistic minority communities. We first explore information access patterns of first generation, Québec-dwelling Japanese immigrants during the pandemic. We will document the community’s perceived limitations in their access and whether they experienced inconsistences and conflicting information between news sources in different languages. Secondly, we test if and how language proficiency prevented Japanese immigrants from accessing local COVID-related information (Canada and Québec), in English and in French. Finally, we will investigate the mental health and behavioural impacts of having limited Canadian COVID-19 information on this community.

Examining Barriers to Mental Health Access for Canadian-born Anglophones and Chinese-born English-favouring Allophones in the Montreal Area

We are interested in examining and comparing two linguistic minority groups: Canadian-born Anglophones (whose first language is English) and Chinese-born English-favouring Allophones (whose first language is Chinese, and whose preferred official language is English). Canadian born Anglophone (AN) communities face substantial linguistic challenges when using mental health services in French, and these challenges have largely been neglected in the literature, perhaps due to their majority status in other provinces. Chinese-born English-favouring allophones (AL) are at a double-disadvantage for healthcare in Quebec, being a linguistic minority (Chinese first language) within a linguistic minority (Anglophone community) in the larger Quebec context. We hope to profile the perceived mental health communication challenges in AN and AL communities when accessing mental health services in French.

We hypothesize that both Canadian-born Anglophones (AN) and Chinese-born English favouring Allophones (AL) will perceive language barriers when accessing mental health services in French, and the extent to which language barriers are perceived will negatively correlate with the individual’s proficiency in French. Additionally, we hypothesize that ALs will perceive significantly more cultural barriers when using mental health services in Quebec compared with ANs.

Francophone Mental Health Care Practitioners’ Perceptions of Working with Anglophone Minorities: Challenges and How They Affect Practice

We are interested in investigating the perceived challenges of working with the Anglophone linguistic minorities reported by Francophone mental health practitioners in Quebec. Oftentimes, Anglophone linguistic minorities in Quebec receives mental health care services from primarily Francophone practitioners. The experiences of linguistic minority patients have been extensively documented, and it has been shown that being part of a linguistic minority decreases accessibility to health care and leads to poorer outcomes for patients (Jacobs, Chen, Karliner, Agger-Gupta, & Mutha, 2006). However, the experiences and challenges of majority linguistic mental health care providers working with linguistic minorities have rarely been explored.

We are interested in conducting a qualitative study on the experience of Francophone mental health care providers, who are part of the linguistic majority in Quebec, and are often faced with providing health care services to Anglophone linguistic minorities.