5 Canadian Mental Health Podcasts You Need To Listen To
The pandemic has made it crystal clear: Health care systems reproduce social inequalities, and people affected by ableism, white supremacy and other inequities are discriminated against even when they’re sick. Check out these Canadian podcasts that explore the intersection of mental health and social justice and offer a chance to hear from folks who live there every day.
Crackdown
The host:
Garth Mullins, a Vancouver-based documentarian and methadone user.
The focus:
The overdose crisis, as seen from the front lines. Mullins offers an intimate understanding of how poorly made policy decisions can affect a user’s life—or death.
Try:
Episode 1: “War Correspondents,” to hear from experts on the war on drugs— drug-user activists who have lobbied, sometimes successfully, for supports such as safe injection sites.
Disability After Dark
The host:
Andrew Gurza, a self-described “cripple content creator” in Toronto.
The focus:
As he explores disability, sexuality and more, Gurza makes the impacts of ableism on mental health impossible to ignore.
Try:
Episode 176: “I Am a Kink Aware Therapist,” for an insightful discussion of how Lyme disease impacted one therapist’s mental health and how that experience informs his practice.
Don't Call Me Resilient
The host:
Vinita Srivastava, a Torontobased editor at The Conversation.
The focus:
From unequal education to undervalued migrant workers, Srivastava explores solutions to the structural problems that demand daily resilience from racialized communities.
Try:
Episode 6: “Indigenous Land Defenders,” to hear Kanien’kehá:ka activist Ellen Gabriel and Tlingit academic Anne Spice discuss protecting stolen ancestral lands and the impacts of intergenerational trauma.
Inappropriate Questions
The host:
Nonbinary millennial Elena Hudgins Lyle and middle-aged dad Harvinder Wadhwa, both in Toronto.
The focus:
Guests such as Kim TallBear, the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Peoples, Technoscience and Environment, discuss how seemingly harmless questions (about, say, gender, weight or childlessness) can negatively affect mental health.
Try:
Episode 1: “Have You Had the Surgery?” for an enlightening exploration of how privacy-violating prying can hurt the well-being of transgender folks.
Seen
The host:
Vancouver-based equity consultant Nic Wayara and counsellor Lala Matthen.
The focus:
These two queer Black and brown women explore how to navigate healing, especially given the negative impacts of white supremacy, settler colonialism and the rest of it.
Try:
Episode 20: “You Can’t Sing Along,” which provides a lens into the ways in which non-Black people of colour can be complicit with anti-Blackness.
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