Today Youth and Mental Health ― Hope, Power, and Resilience

This book focuses on the social and intersectional determinants of mental health among youth. The innovative and cutting edge text arises out of multidisciplinary fields of academic, researchers, policy makers, practitioners, artists, and youth. Contributions from Canada, Germany, Portugal, South Korea, Burkina Faso, Afghanistan, and Jamaica addresses the complexities and the opportunities for youth across contexts. Each chapter entails an introduction to the topic, literature review and research findings, discussion, and implications in regard to research, policy, and practice. A unique aspect of the book is the inclusion of a critical response to each chapter’s content from diverse stakeholders (such as policy makers, front line workers, practitioners, community activists, artists and youth).The book is a critical and current contribution to exploring youth mental health and, specifically, the ways in which youth learn, live, and resist in a world around them. Topics examined include youth social engagement, civic integration, and political participation at multiple local, regional, and transnational levels.

Soheila Pashang, MSW, PhD is a Professor and Academic Coordinator in the Department of Health and Sciences, Social Service Worker – Immigrants and Refugees Program at Seneca College. She has over two decades of professional work as a social worker within interdisciplinary fields in Toronto. Her area of professional practice and academic work is informed by gender, equity, and social justice grounded in anti-racism and colonialism and anti-oppression perspectives. By relying on arts informed strategies, professor Pashang focuses on the issues of forced displacement, illegalized migration, Canadian immigration system, human service organizations, gender violence, trauma and mental health. She is a recipient of a number of awards for her contributions towards the front-line work, advocacy, and academic achievement, and has published poetry, books, and chapters.

Nazilla Khanlou, RN, PhD is the Women's Health Research Chair in Mental Health in the Faculty of Health at York University and an Associate Professor in its School of Nursing. Professor Khanlou's clinical background is in psychiatric nursing. Her overall program of research is situated in the interdisciplinary field of community-based mental health promotion in general, and mental health promotion among youth and women in multicultural and immigrant-receiving settings in particular. She has received grants from peer-reviewed federal and provincial research funding agencies. She is founder of the International Network on Youth Integration (INYI), an international network for knowledge exchange and collaboration on youth. She has published articles, chapters, and books on youth, women, and mental health.

Jennifer Clarke, MSW, RSW, PhD (c) is an Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work at Ryerson University. Her teaching, research and practice are grounded in anti-oppression, critical race, and anti-Black racism perspectives in the areas of social work education; child welfare; and K-12 public education. Her overall program of research explores the intersections of race, child welfare and education, with a focus on surveillance, racial profiling, criminalization, and the pathways of confinement via zero tolerance school safety-to-prison pipeline; grief and trauma among Black families who lose children; social issues in the Caribbean; and critical policy analysis. She is the recipient of multiple research grants and awards, has published several peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters, and currently a guest editor for the Journal of Critical Anti-Oppressive Social Inquiry (CAOS).