ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Life-Course Epidemiology and Social Inequalities in Health
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1628162
"I am a Black man in Canada! I wish I could say differently!" Exploring the impact of direct and indirect encounters with the police and welfare system on anxiety and depression among Black youth in Toronto, Canada
Provisionally accepted
Eyram Adzo Agbe1
Ann Kwarteng2
Tricia Tetteh2Salwa Regragui2Ken Williams2Nombuso Dlamini2
Godfred O. Boateng2*- 1Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada
- 2York University, Toronto, Canada
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Recent studies point to differences in mental health outcomes among Black youth living in Canada, influenced by structural experiences of anti-Black racism. The influence of policing and encounters with the criminal justice and child welfare systems in Canada on Black youth mental health outcomes remains understudied, exacerbated by the minimal collection of race-based health data in the country. Based on an intersectional approach and using semi-structured interviews with twenty-four Black youth in the Greater Toronto Area, this study explores how direct and indirect encounters with the criminal justice and child welfare systems in Toronto influence anxiety and depression symptomatology among Black youth and their families. We found that this population experienced significant psychosocial weathering and hypervigilance and physical insecurity, with adaptive capacity being eroded by a sense of disposability. This study contributes new evidence to research on criminalization and racism in Canada and proposes a critical health approach to studying these issues by paying attention to the caregiving burden among Black families experiencing criminalization, as well as the influence of space and place in mitigating the health impact of police and welfare encounters.
Keywords: Mental Health, Black youth, intersectionality theory, Canada, Anxiety, policing
Received: 13 May 2025; Accepted: 02 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Agbe, Kwarteng, Tetteh, Regragui, Williams, Dlamini and Boateng. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Godfred O. Boateng, York University, Toronto, Canada
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