​Rayanne Banaga, a Peer Support Worker at St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton’s Youth Wellness Centre, is facilitating a program aimed at improving access to mental health support for Black and racialized youth. 

St. Joseph's Healthcare Hamilton's Youth Wellness Centre has launched a mental health program for Black youth in the community. 

Rayanne Banaga, a Peer Support Worker at the centre, is facilitating Black Table Talk – a program aimed at improving access to mental health support for racialized youth. 

The program offers a series of youth-led virtual mental health workshops and drop-in peer support groups to Black youth ages 13-25.

Through informed discussion about anti-Blackness, stigma, support and coping together, the program explores mental wellness and healing in a safe space specifically carved out for Black youth.

"Mental health looks different for a lot of Black youth," Banaga says. "I think we experience things in a specific way that can come with stigmatization. Often, we're read as angry trouble-makers where there's actually trauma."

As a Peer Support Worker, Banaga uses her lived experience navigating the mental health system to support racialized youth at the centre.

"We wanted to make a program that was specifically for Black youth to be able to discuss what their struggles are, what it's like to live their daily life, and offer some coping skills," she adds.  

Her advice to Black youth who need help coping is to seek out community.

"A lot of healing can come from being able to connect with other Black folks and racialized people who have had mental health struggles," she says. "Find relationships, relatability, and build community around that by bringing people together to heal with each other."

Black Table Talk is being offered in partnership with the Disability Justice Network of Ontario, and with support from Bell Let's Talk.

About the Youth Wellness Centre 

St. Joseph's Healthcare Hamilton's Youth Wellness Centre (YWC) is a safe environment for youth to receive expert care for mental health and substance use issues. The YWC exists to help young people access the mental health they need, no matter what barriers they may be facing. The YWC offers confidential clinical care under three main streams: early intervention, transition support, and mobile. The early intervention stream is for young people who are experiencing emerging mental health and substance use concerns. The transition support stream is for youth transitioning from child and adolescent mental health services to adult mental health services. The mobile stream provides support to young people in post-secondary schools, marginalized and street-involved youth.

To learn more about the YWC, visit St. Joseph's Healthcare Hamilton's website.