The Immigrant and Refugee Mental Health Project facilitates a virtual Community of Practice (CoP) comprised of health, settlement and social services providers across Canada who support the mental health of immigrants and refugees. The CoP online discussion board allows providers to pose questions to the Project’s panel of subject matter experts (SMEs). We will be bringing you some of the questions posed by providers and answers provided by the SMEs.   

Question

I often meet some newcomer teenager clients who are not fluent in English and become upset when they try to communicate with others. They are hesitant and not confident. Learning a new language is not easy. They need time to adjust along with external support, not only from their families, but also from the schools and community. It is easy for these teenagers to experience isolation and stress, which will affect their mental health.

As a community and immigrant service provider, how can I provide more support and build their confidence?

Dr. Debra Stein, Staff Psychiatrist (children and adolescents), SickKids Centre for Community Mental Health, writes:

The writer is right to identify language learning as a major concern for newcomer teens, and a source of distress given its key role in successful settlement in a receiving country.

One way of supporting these teens is to focus on their other strengths as they work to gain fluency in the new language. Help them identify, for themselves, the skills and competencies they already have and that will get them through this challenge (e.g., “Your determination/discipline/love of learning/sociability/ are really going to help with learning English/French”). Also find out what the teenager is good at!

Provide programming where mastery of skills/pleasure and enjoyment are not language specific: sports, cooking, crafts like sewing and knitting, visual arts, and music making, are all great activities, even more so if youth indicate areas of competence and can teach what they know. 

These types of activities have the bonus of bringing youth together, which brings us to the value of peer support. In the literature on refugee youth adaptation, friendships and close relationships with peers have often been identified by youth themselves as one of the most important factors in coping with life in a new country. You can support the youth in your service by providing opportunities for connection with peers who speak the same language and are at different stages in the settlement process. 

It is also important to check in with how school and language learning are going, and whether anything is getting in the way of this. You could inquire about family and other settlement stressors that are making it harder to learn, and also identify when more mental health supports are warranted. Traumatized, depressed or anxious teens may not tolerate classroom settings with large amounts of interpersonal contact, and they may have significantly impaired concentration and memory which prevents them from retaining what they learn in class.  

You might suggest activities outside of the classroom setting that will help with gaining language fluency, for example watching English/French television (or starting with movies in their language that are subtitled in English/French), using free and fun language apps like Duolingo, visiting the public library and finding a range of books in English/French that interest them; finding a conversation “buddy” who also wants to practice speaking the new language, doing a language exchange (trade English conversation for conversation in the youth’s language), or pairing the youth with a volunteer for one-on-one tutoring. 

Finally, openly validating how hard it is right now for your client, then providing reassurance that it does get easier, in your experience with other youth who have had similar struggles (perhaps even disclosing, if it feels appropriate, if you have personal experience with learning and living in a new language), can be very helpful. Teens often feel they are the only ones struggling, and it may be helpful simply to know they are not alone.