Mental health impacts of pandemic on Toronto's young people could linger for years: report
CBC
A wide-ranging new report that tracks the quality of life in Toronto is sounding the alarm about a looming crisis for the city's young people in the years ahead.
Compiling information gleaned from hundreds of studies, interviews and articles, the Toronto Foundation's 2021 Vital Signs report warns of "alarming increases in mental health challenges" for children and youth in the city over the past two years.
That includes more young people reporting feelings of loneliness, an uptick in visits to the Hospital for Sick Children emergency room over suicidal ideation, and increasing numbers of eating disorders.
Those trends, coupled with a ballooning waiting list for services, are leading to widespread concerns that the impact of the last two years on mental health will continue on long after the pandemic is over.
"We are concerned that long-term anxiety and depression become life-long illnesses and burdens for our children to carry," said Toronto Foundation president and CEO Sharon Avery.
Avery called mental health challenges a "shadow pandemic" that runs the risk of "overrunning the mental health system, which was already overburdened, particularly for youth."
In early 2020, Children's Mental Health Ontario (CMHO) released numbers showing that some 28,000 children and youth under the age of 18 were waiting for mental health and addiction services — more than double the 2017 waiting list.