Improving Mental Health Care for Migrant and Minority Patients for English-Speaking Communities in Québec

Quebec’s English-speaking communities include people from migrant and minority backgrounds who differ in their cultural background and first language (while preferring English as first official language). Access to mental health care for these communities benefits from training and retaining clinicians from a wide range of cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Unfortunately, these clinicians often leave Québec due to limited French-language support and lack of training in multicultural practice. The loss has direct implications for quality of care: psychological interventions are most effective when delivered in a culturally-sensitive way, in the patient’s first language. We propose a bilingual mini-conference and training workshop to help tackle this challenge.

The event will bring together clinicians, students, educators, and policy stakeholders from those disciplines granting the right to (a) practice psychotherapy in Quebec, or (b) pursue a psychotherapy license: clinical psychology, psychiatry, nursing, social work, and occupational therapy. Through interactive workshops, applied training sessions (e.g., the Cultural Formulation Interview), and collaborative discussions, participants will explore how we can better support the training and retention of multilingual and multicultural mental health professionals. Speakers will also present findings from recent studies, including those funded by Dialogue McGill, investigating clinician retention and language-related barriers to care. The goal is to share knowledge, co-develop solutions, and foster a province-wide dialogue on inclusive training.

The event will be hybrid and fully bilingual: speakers will have the option to present in French or English. Concordia University will host the event, supported by research assistants, a keynote speaker, and trained facilitators. The results will be translated where necessary and shared widely across Québec’s mental health networks. By focusing on both language and culture, this initiative aims to help build a more sustainable, accessible, and culturally safe mental health care system for English-speaking Quebecers, especially those from migrant and minority backgrounds.

Outputs:

March 2026 - Hosted a conference on Language, Culture, and Mental Health.