1,300 Ottawa students tried to end lives: report

One out of every nine students in Ottawa seriously considered suicide in 2017 and more than 1,300 said they tried to end their lives last year.

Of those young people who attempted suicide, 60 per cent said they had wanted to talk to someone for help, but didn’t know where to turn.

The alarming numbers are in the Status of Mental Health in Ottawa report published Monday by Ottawa Public Health.

While Ottawans as a whole report their mental health is good — 91 per cent of those aged 12 or older say they are satisfied with their lives and 75 per cent reported that they’d felt happy nearly every day of the previous month — for some segments of the city the mood is darker.

That’s especially true for students in grades 7 to 12.

“It’s a troubling and a sad stat,” said Benjamin Leikin, supervisor of the mental-health unit at OPH and one of the report’s authors. “It shows the seriousness of suicide and how important it is that we not shy away from conversations about suicide.”

The research is undertaken every three years on behalf of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, but this time OPH did extra sampling to give a snapshot of Ottawa’s mental health and how it compares to the rest of Ontario. If there is any good news in the stats, it’s that the percentage of students who thought about suicide is down slightly from 2014 as is the percentage of them who didn’t know where to turn for help.

“We did have a very slight decrease, but it’s definitely not something to celebrate,” Leikin said.

The city averages about 80 suicides a year, about 10 per cent of which are youth aged 15-24, he said. The Ottawa figures are comparable to what’s being seen elsewhere in the province.

Among the other findings in the wide-ranging report:

The number of hospital visits for mental-health conditions and addictions rose 45 per cent between 2007 and 2016 with the bulk of the increase among those aged 15-24.

Fifty-six per cent of Ottawa high school students say they use smartphones and other electronic devices between two to four hours a day with more than a quarter of them saying they spend five or more hours a day on their devices.

Twenty-nine per cent of Indigenous youth in the Champlain health region report symptoms of problematic substance abuse.

Just 63 per cent of Ottawa residents say they feel a strong sense of belonging to their community, a significantly and consistently lower rate than in other areas of the province.

People who live in low-income areas are three times more likely to report “fair” or “poor” mental health.

“This report is really a starting point for us,” Leikin said. “We hope this report will help us explore other questions. Where are the gaps in the data? What opportunities do we have from this data that can help inform or shape future policies or programs? We have the data. Now we want to hear the stories.”

The information about students and suicide risks highlights the need for more education about where and how they can find help, he said.

“The wonderful awareness campaigns we have are a great step, but it’s also important that these young people feel confident and that they trust those who they’re reaching out to.”

He cited the Youth Services Bureau’s new chat-based crisis line as one example of an agency that’s adapting its service to better reach the people who need it.

Jeanne Lowe, executive director of the YSB, said the agency realized that most of the people who called its 24/7 crisis line were parents and family members, not the person in crisis.

“We weren’t reaching the young people themselves,” she said. “We all know that technology and mobile services are where kids typically communicate more, so we looked at a chat line as part of our crisis line.”

The chat line ysb.chat.ca is monitored 24/7 by the same staff who answer the crisis phone. All of its services can be accessed through its website www.ysb.ca. The crisis line is 613-260-2360.

The agency also has a counsellor in four area high schools and offers a twice-weekly, walk-in mental-health clinic on Tuesdays and Thursdays from noon until 8 p.m. at 2301 Carling Ave.