Leaders must focus on mental health

Let us make a less-than-modest proposal.

The next designated “Let’s Talk Day” on mental health should be the day this spring that Premier Doug Ford visits the lieutenantgovernor to trigger an Ontario election.

And it should be reprised pretty much every day thereafter until the vote on June 2.

The crisis that is mental-health care in this province should be a paramount issue for those who seek to govern. For the simple reason that it affects just about everything.

What’s needed will carry a big price tag. But failure to pay it, failure to rise to a rapidly growing challenge, will cost massively more in the long term in all manner of ways.

It’s clear by now that the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic — the lockdowns and protocols imposed to combat it — are washing over us in painful ways and are likely to do so for a generation.

Therapists and counsellors in Ontario and elsewhere have been frantically busy for most of the past two years.

A health-care system that didn’t come close to meeting demand even before the pandemic, has been overwhelmed.

As the Star’s Nadine Yousif reported this week, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health’s latest national survey showed levels of anxiety, depression and substance use surging along with the Omicron variant’s rapid spread.

CAMH psychiatrist Dr. David Gratzer said this wave feels different from earlier ones for many people, as if “the rug has been pulled out from under them after they thought the worst was over.

“I see more pessimism and less resilience than in previous waves,” Gratzer added. “Remember, we were already in a mentalhealth crisis before the pandemic began, and this won’t end when the last COVID patient leaves the ICU. For health policy-makers, this is a long-term issue that needs to be addressed right now.”

The survey found front-line workers and women were disproportionately struggling with anxiety and depression.

There are obvious reasons, explained Dr. Samantha Wells, a senior director of research at CAMH who helped lead the survey.

“These larger increases among women may reflect that they are often carrying a disproportionate burden, including imbalances in caregiving responsibilities and front-line work,” she said.

It’s also the case, research has shown, that women have taken the hardest economic hit over the past two years.

Even if someone had been specifically assigned to the task, they would have found it difficult to design a set of circumstances more hazardous to mental well-being than those at play during the pandemic.

It has left people disoriented, isolated and exhausted, with relationships strained and families distressed as they try to cope with disrupted education, perilous work environments, financial uncertainty.

“While people are incredibly resilient, as this pandemic wears on it’s the people working on the front lines who are among the most affected,” Wells said.

The CAMH study also found a significant increase in reports of unmet mental-health needs, with 24 per cent of those surveyed saying they had been unable to obtain needed services in the last 12 months.

Surprisingly, perhaps, it was those age 18 to 39 — not seniors — who reported the highest levels of moderate to severe anxiety, loneliness and feelings of depression.

And the CAMH survey dealt only with adults. The toll taken on children — with the disruptions to school, athletics, social lives, the lost graduations and proms that normally serve as milestones along the path to maturity — presents a looming wave of mental-health demand.

It’s safe to say that without the comfort and consolation of normal relationships, and with trust in institutions and their own futures fractured, the impact of pandemic measures will be long-lasting.

Research suggests, moreover, that the pandemic’s mental-health impact is disproportionately affecting those most vulnerable and from more complex circumstances — low-income, Indigenous and racialized groups.

“It has never been more important to invest in mental health to prepare our health-care system for the fallout from this pandemic,” said Dr. Hayley Hamilton, the other co-leader of the CAMH survey.

As the impact becomes clear, plans for services and how to fund them should be top of mind for the major challengers in the forthcoming Ontario election.

At core, government is about deciding who gets what, about how to allot finite resources to almost endless demands.

Elections are about deciding who gets to make those decisions.

No party leader who fails to spell out in the coming campaign a comprehensive mentalhealth program to face this challenge should be entrusted with the privilege.

I see more pessimism and less resilience than in previous waves. Remember, we were already in a mental-health crisis before the pandemic began, and this won’t end when the last COVID patient leaves the ICU. DR. DAVID GRATZER CENTRE FOR ADDICTION AND MENTAL HEALTH