Reimagining Mental Health and Addiction Under the Covid-19 Pandemic, Volume 2: The Covid-19 Pandemic, Mental Health, and Black/Afro Identity

This edited collection is a follow-up to Algoma University’s inaugural conference on mental health and addiction held at the Brampton campus in Ontario, Canada. We live in a society where many marginalized communities continue to bear a historically disproportionate burden on their psychological, mental, and economic well-being, especially under the Covid-19 pandemic. Covid-19 has had a continuing impact on marginalized and racialized communities at all levels. We are now witnessing the compounded effects in the form of a worsening mental health and addiction crisis and its subsequent impact on children’s education, service delivery, and overall psychosocial well-being.

Covid-19 has widened the gap and increased poverty disparities between high-income and low-income individuals. Furthermore, it has affected the psychosocial resilience of people. As communities of scholars, practitioners, and researchers, we have a responsibility to address these existential issues in ways that are ethical and transformative. This type of engagement should help mitigate the consequences of the pandemic in an intersectional manner. These conversations should assist us in understanding and addressing the trauma and suffering that marginalized communities and individuals continue to endure. Together, we can work to find answers to mental health and addiction challenges, while valuing people’s histories and realities within this intersectional engagement.

This book aims to redefine psychiatric discourse in the age of the pandemic and encourage us to imagine how the world can be reformed in ways that are both ethical and political. It has the potential to shed light on the values and realities of communities in discussions of medical sociology, particularly concerning the impact of Covid-19 on marginalized communities.

This book is structured into three volumes. Volume one delves into the repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic on the mental health of various ethnic groups. Volume two specifically addresses the impact of the pandemic on the mental health of Afro-Black individuals. Volume three explores the connections between the COVID-19 pandemic, psychological well-being, and colonialism.

Dr. Dionisio Nyaga has a Ph.D from Social Justice Education/SESE/University of Toronto. He is an Assistant Professor at Algoma University-School of Social Work-Timmins campus. His research practice and teaching interests are in the areas of ethical and moral philosophy in research, critical reflexive methodologies, Afro-pessimism, gender studies, anti-oppressive practice and teaching, psychic methodologies of care, textual analysis, African studies, Black and Blackness, Black masculinities, spiritualities, transnational and transcultural studies. He has co-edited a book on ethical responsibilities and duties of researcher dubbed Critical research methodologies: Ethics and responsibilities.

Dr. Rose Ann Torres is an Assistant Professor and the Director of the School of Social Work at Algoma University. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology and Equity Studies in Education from OISE/University of Toronto. Prior to joining Algoma University, she was an Assistant Professor at University of New Brunswick. She is the principal investigator of the SSHRC Insight Development Grants research project entitled ＂Examining Access to Mental Health Care Service: The Impact of COVID-19 on Filipino Health Care Workers in Northern Ontario＂ and co-principal investigator of the SSHRC Institutional Grants project titled ＂Effects of COVID-19 on Teaching and Learning: Stories of Indigenous and Black and Asian Faculty Members and Students at Algoma University.＂ She co-edited books on ＂Outside and In-Between: Theorizing Asian Canadian Exclusion and the Challenges of Identity Formation＂ and ＂Critical Research Methodologies: Ethics and Responsibilities.＂ She currently serves as an Advisory Board Member for Sault College and First Nations Technical Institute. She has been instrumental in establishing pathways and partnerships with local and international universities and colleges in the School of Social Work at Algoma University, including with Oshki-Wanjack Institute. Dr. Torres’s work as an educator includes community engagement and organizing, as well as consultancy services in interdisciplinary research that crosses geographic borders with Asia, Canada, Africa, and other countries. Dr. Torres’s commitment to the community seeks to bring about transformative change and critical development in terms of health and social well-being, civic engagement, and ecological sustainability. At Algoma University, she teaches critical policy in the north, social work research, social work philosophy and ethics, critical social work practice: Anishinaabe, structural and feminist perspectives.