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home / 世界杯决赛2022

mandryk: advocate's youth mental health report should be a fresh start

we should recognize the pandemic made things worse for some youth, but we can't simply ignore there were big problems long before covid-19.

by murray mandryk

apr 5 2022
read time 3 minute read
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the dangers of last week’s special report from children’s advocate lisa broda goes well beyond her findings that we’ve reached a crisis in getting our youth the mental health and addictions help they desperately need.

yes, we are ignoring the problem or giving it short-shrift — even as we insist it is an issue that is engrained in our public conscience.
but the real danger is the ease in which we choose to ignore these existing realities or (arguably, worse) find convenient excuses to frame the issues in what amounts to a political argument about government covid-19 policy choices.
in short: the problem in the special report isn’t the covid-19 effect on youth mental health. the problem is this was a problem long before we had a pandemic.
it is true that broda’s report found the pandemic caused children and youth even greater suffering because of long-wait periods for services, a lack of resources and, of course, isolation.
broda’s work, that included a survey 500 participants, found that 38 per cent of those surveyed suffered a mental health decline stemming from the pandemic.
“there’s no question that covid-19 has exacerbated these issues,” broda told reporters at a press conference a week ago.
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we can’t ignore or underplay this. young people — and sadly, a lot of older ones — suffered under pandemic isolation. we should be fair to the saskatchewan party government and accept this was a key factor in their eagerness to remove covid-19 restrictions — especially those that limited youth sports activities or those prohibiting in-class learning.
that said, it’s equally important to recognize that children and youth were facing this crisis long before any pandemic occurred. for some, school is all part of the social anxiety that has long taken a toll.

the pandemic did make things worse for many kids, but we can’t simply ignore there were big problems long before covid-19 was a thing , saskatoon-based child and adolescent psychiatrist tamara hinz noted last year. she said: “restrictions can affect you … but your grandma dying of covid affects you and your mental health, too.”

there were 235 identified youth suicides (under 19 years old) between 2010 and 2021, according to the saskatchewan coroners’s office.
one of those young people was kye ball, whose parents chris and wanda came to the legislature last week to remind politicians how deep rooted this crisis has been.
“it’s been a problem for years. we’ve had our marches. we’ve ended up on the front steps of this building and there has been nothing done and they won’t give us a timeline on when they’re going to fix this problem,” chris ball told reporters.
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“we need a timeline on when they’re going to fix this problem.”
so what we really need to do right now is take some of the things we learned during the pandemic and use it to address those long-standing problems.

as hinz so aptly put it earlier this year: “how we come together is the million-dollar question.”

this was broda’s conclusion as well: “the impacts of the pandemic should signal the increased urgency required to address barriers to meaningful services that were already an issue prior to the pandemic.”
the government needs to seriously consider her observation that the “system isn’t working for youth” and her 14 recommendations — beginning with a youth advisory council in the ministry of health — that could help design better services and programming.
decreased wait times, more funding for mental health councillors in schools  — including indigenous elders — are incredibly important recommendations. we need to make schools a haven for kids struggling — not a place they dread.
similarly, expanded outreach-based mental health and addictions services that meet the needs of child and youth clients is critical. so is funding for in-home support services to families with children with mental health and addiction-related needs.

emphasis on supporting those “middle-tier” youth not yet in crisis is very wise .

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but perhaps nothing is as critical right now as taking what we learned from the pandemic and applying it to these long-standing issues.
mandryk is the political columnist for the regina leader-post and the saskatoon starphoenix.
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murray mandryk
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