People in Waterloo-Wellington are stressed about COVID-19, convoys and now Ukraine: CMHA

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic — and the feeling that it may never end — continues to cause stress and anxiety for people in Waterloo-Wellington, a new survey shows.

But that's not the only issue worrying people, says Helen Fishburn, CEO of Canadian Mental Health Association Waterloo-Wellington.

"Our [call] volumes tend to follow COVID numbers, so if our COVID numbers are higher, our call volumes are higher," Fishburn told CBC Kitchener-Waterloo, adding that a spike was seen over the holidays when the Omicron wave forced many Ontarians to once again cancel holiday plans.

But on top of that, now, are feelings of stress and anxiety linked to public health protests and the impact that the war on Ukraine has on human lives.

Frishburn said last month, as the convoy protests were underway in Ottawa and across the country, they saw call volumes swell.

"We saw a lot of dark feelings emerge. We saw the division in our community and we saw people really suffering and struggling with the way many protesters were expressing their frustration and their anger," she said.

Now, the COVID-19 calls are mixed with calls about Russia invading Ukraine.

"We're also seeing a peak in our call volumes relating to the stress, worry and overall trauma relating from the war in Ukraine. We're getting a lot of people calling from our community who are really distressed about the war and the pain that that's generating across our world," she said.

A CMHA survey sampled 3,030 people aged 18 and older living in Canada between Nov. 29 and Dec. 7. The survey was representative of the adult Canadian population by age, gender, province/territory, and household income. It has a margin of error of 1.79 per cent.

The fourth report from that survey was released this week.

It found in Ontario, 64 per cent of people were worried about new variants and 56 per cent were worried about COVID-19 circulating in the population for years to come.

More than a third, 39 per cent, said their mental health has declined since the start of the pandemic.

The lead researcher for the study was Emily Jenkins, a professor of nursing at the University of British Columbia. She said the numbers also showed inequities in how different groups of people have been impacted by the pandemic.

For example, 57 per cent of people who were unemployed due to COVID-19 said their mental health had declined.