The Canadian Psychiatric Association (CPA) condemns racism, prejudice and discrimination in all forms, wherever it occurs, and stands in solidarity with colleagues and patients from Black, Indigenous, and other racialized communities.

The killing of George Floyd in the US has invoked distress, fear, trauma, and outrage worldwide. The enduring effects of racism, including historical policies of forced assimilation, marginalization, and discrimination, have a profound effect on physical and mental health. As a professional group, psychiatrists are all too familiar with the negative effects of stigma, discrimination, poverty, trauma, and social exclusion on people with mental illnesses and their families.

We have an individual and collective responsibility to advocate for the abolition of structural inequalities and to confront racist attitudes, behaviour and injustices whenever we encounter them.