Concern about the mental health challenges of young Canadians has been growing during the nearly two years of disruptions and repeated isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic.
But experts say we do not have the tools to properly assess the toll that the pandemic has taken on the mental health of Canadian kids. Creating standards for how mental health is measured could help grasp the scale of the problem.
Children’s Healthcare Canada, a national organization representing kids’ health-care providers, said children’s hospitals are reporting higher numbers of kids being admitted for suicide attempts, substance abuse and complex eating disorders.
Young Canadians reached out to Kids Help Phone about 4.6 million times in 2020, up from the 1.9 million connections in 2019, according to a report from the health service for youth.
Keith Dobson, professor of clinical psychology at the University of Calgary, said while certain metrics like hospitalizations and physician contacts are well-recorded, there are no standardized screening tools for mental health assessment in the country.
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Dobson, who is also a researcher at the Mental Health Commission of Canada, said different groups and organizations, even within the same health-care system, will use different tools.
“That makes it really difficult to know what the rates are and how to compare them from place to place,” he said.
Paul-Emile Cloutier, president of HealthCareCAN, said standards are important for making sure money invested in the health system will actually result in positive outcomes.
“If you don’t have any standards, you won’t be able to evaluate if you’ve improved the health-care system of those people who are suffering from a mental illness,” said Cloutier.
Currently the provinces and territories are engaged in a “disjointed approach” to mental health care, where each province has a separate way of not only providing those services but collecting data as well, he said.
“And once you have that data, they don’t share that data with other provinces, which I think is a major unfortunate situation, because I think they should,” said Cloutier.
Dr. Tyler Black, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at University of British Columbia, said, “We haven’t done a great job in regularly surveying, or even monitoring national collections of this sort of data.”
Black, who is also a suicidologist, said there is a need for large national data sets to make any determinations about suicides among children, because it is less common, but it can take years to get that data in Canada.
“We’re not great in collating these types of things with modern, responsive, dashboard-style data. We get dumps of data every year, which makes it very hard to know what’s going on in the moment.”
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Dobson said an existing tool that could be used as a standard for assessing depression is the depression module of the Patient Health Questionnaire, the latter a diagnostic tool for common mental disorders.
He said this measure is being used more internationally and can be used for adults and children alike.
Black said because that screening tool was designed in a very specific way, he would prefer one that is “unequivocal” to interpret, such as asking a patient point-blank how they are doing at this moment.
He said that while he appreciates researchers wanting to create complicated scales, they are simply turning a subjective question into a scale that acts as a proxy for asking the question directly.
“I prefer more easily interpretable data that’s a little bit easier for kids to respond to,” said Black.
He added that he would like to see child patients and their families give input in the types of measures used for kids’ mental health.
“There isn’t really a great one, unfortunately, for anxiety, because anxiety comes in different forms,” said Dobson.
“But if there was a standard tool that was used across the country, that would be fantastic.”
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Cloutier said the selection of Carolyn Bennett as minister of mental health is a significant step forward for creating these types of countrywide standards.
Bennett said in an interview with CTV News published on Jan. 18 that the federal government’s proposed mental health transfers to provinces may be tied to showing standards are being met.
The development of mental health standards is one of the first priorities listed in Bennett’s mandate letter.
Bennett’s office said in a statement the government committed $45 million in last year’s budget to develop national standards for mental health services.
The office did not respond to a question about whether the minister would create standardized assessment tools.
VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.
The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.
The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.
The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.
The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.
MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.
In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.
“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.
“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.
“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.
The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.
“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”
The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.
A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.
Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.
Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.
Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.
“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.
“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”
Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.
“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.
Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.
“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”
But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.
Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.
“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.
Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.
The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
