Cmaj Podcasts

A recent article in CMAJ, Mental health service use among Black adolescents in Ontario by sex and stress level: a cross-sectional study, reveals how patterns of mental health service use among Black youth shift with the level of psychological distress. Lead author Mercedes Sobers, a PhD candidate in epidemiology at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health and research coordinator at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, joins the podcast to unpack the findings and their implications.The study found that Black male youth had higher odds of accessing services than white male youth when at low levels of distress but lower odds of accessing services at high levels. Black female youth had lower odds of service use than white female youth at both low and high distress levels. Mercedes explains how these patterns may reflect how behaviour is interpreted: Black boys may be referred to services more often at lower distress levels but steered toward more punitive responses when distress rises. For Black girls, she