Mental Health Workshop at the Lab with Rahim Thawer

On March 15, Rahim Thawer gave a talk at the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work about the social determinants of GBTQ mental health: SAME LABELS, DIFFERENT DETERMINANTS.

We often reduce mental health to diagnostic labels, wellness to the absence of symptoms, and queer men’s health to prevalence rates. If we take an exploratory approach to mental health and wellness we can begin to unravel some of the specific determinants of mental health concerns that affect GBTQ2S guys. As a racialized queer psychotherapist, Rahim Thawer seeks to examine 11 unique determinants that queer men come up against that impact their well-being. These include but are not limited to, internalized shame, body image, substance use, ageing, and the landscape of connection-seeking.

Rahim Thawer works as a psychotherapist, clinical supervisor, facilitator and public speaker, sessional lecturer, writer, and community organizer. He began working in the HIV/AIDS sector in 2008 and dedicated over a decade to LGBTQ Muslim community organizing. He was welcomed as an International Visiting Scholar with the South African College for Applied Psychology (SACAP) for the 2021-2022 academic year and has taught as a lecturer at multiple universities in Canada. He’s an appointed Fellow at the Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies at the University of Toronto for his contributions to the field of sexuality. He was also a co-editor and contributor for an anthology entitled Any Other Way: How Toronto Got Queer (shortlisted for the 2017 Toronto Book Awards).