Children and Youth Mental Health Deterioration in Canada: Lessons Learned Pre-during-Post Covid-19 Pandemic

Introduction: More than 60% of young people identified worsening mental health with the pandemic. In fact, 42% of youth experienced moderate to severe anxiety and 24% expressed having moderate to severe depression during the pandemic. In a period of increasing need for services, only approximately 50% of youth aged 12 to 24 who access mental health and substance use identified that supports were readily accessible.

Objectives: Since 2018, Children First Canada (CFC) has released an annual report, Raising Canada, exploring the top ten threats that children and youth face. The goal of this report is to ensure that Canada is the top place for children and youth to live. In partnership with the Faculty of Social Work, University of Calgary, and CFC, this goal can further be accomplished by conducting research with stakeholders. Our objective is to examine what are the main factors influencing children and youth mental health and propose concrete suggestions based on stakeholders’ wisdom and experience. In this presentation we will explain why mental health is one of the top 10 threats facing children and youth in Canada.

Methods: Through descriptive analysis, we analyzed 26 semi-structured interviews with stakeholders including pediatricians, dieticians, researchers, and other professionals who work with young people, two focus groups with a law office that focuses on children’s rights, and a group of diverse professionals who focus on enhancing child wellbeing. A researcher organized and became familiarized with the transcripts, coded, and identified themes and patterns in the data. Transcripts, themes, and quotations were reviewed with another researcher to determine the degree to which the extracts fit identified themes through a peer-review process. Transcripts were reviewed independently by four members of the team to arrive at consensus on the themes. When there was no consensus, the team further discussed themes to arrive at the best fit. A coding system for organizing themes and sub-themes was developed. The revised themes that provide the best insight into the threat Canadian young people’s mental health are presented and discussed in the results.

Results: The overarching finding in this study was that COVID-19 played a significant role in the deterioration of children and youth’s mental health. The COVID-19 pandemic is not yet over and even with preventative measures lifted, the mental well-being for many children and youth continues to be precarious. In fact, all of the participants who talked about mental health emphasized the detrimental impact the pandemic had on the emotional well-being of young people. According to our results the main themes explaining children and youth mental health decline include: disconnect from formal and informal supports, physical and social isolation, decrease in physical activity, and lack of addressing concerns.

Discussion: We will elaborate on suggestions on addressing these challenges will be provided including advocacy for supports, strengthening partnerships, and devising a system of accountability to ensure that the status quo is not maintained. Recommendations will be of interest to young people, families, service providers (including social workers), community members, government officials and policymakers.