Madeline Smith - Yesterday
EDMONTON JOURNAL
Alberta doctors say children’s mental health needs “urgent attention” as a new survey offers a snapshot of escalating issues among the province’s youth.
© David BloomThe Stollery Children's Hospital Emergency entrance.
In an online panel survey conducted from May 4-17 via the Alberta Medical Association’s albertapatients.ca platform, 713 parents answered questions about how the COVID-19 pandemic affected their children’s health. Two-thirds of the parents surveyed said the mental health of at least one of their children is worse compared to before the pandemic began.
The results are especially stark for parents of high-school-aged kids, with 77 per cent of parents of children 15 and older reporting deteriorating mental health for their kids.
Health workers and youth advocates have previously raised alarm about the situation, reporting a spike in youth with eating disorders, as well as more young people seeking help for depression, anxiety, substance use and self-harm.
AMA president Dr. Michelle Warren said more needs to be done to make sure youth can access the treatment they need.
“This is something that needs urgent attention because it’s going to take a long time to get caught up on care that’s been delayed,” she said.
On Tuesday, the provincial government released details of their response to the Child and Youth Well-being Review , which gathered information over about two months in mid-2021 to determine how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected children and youth.
According to the province, they’re taking several new steps in response to the panel’s 10 broad recommendations. They include expanding “prevention and early intervention supports” like virtual counselling and in-school supports. The government is also spending $110 million over three years to help schools with “pandemic-related issues” like learning loss, school nutrition and mental health supports.
Provincial officials previously announced money to expand youth mental-health hubs and virtual counselling services.
Associate minister of mental health and addictions Mike Ellis said in a statement that improving youth mental health is a “top priority” for the provincial government.
Doctors ‘taken aback’ by number of kids hospitalized for mental-health issues
Warren, a rural family doctor, said there isn’t just one factor driving the current crisis. She’s seen patients struggle with isolation and being cut off from social supports during the pandemic, and many kids are also dealing with fear and anxiety about their health and their family’s safety. Some caught COVID themselves or saw loved ones hospitalized, or even killed, by the virus.
Nearly 60 per cent of the parents who responded to the AMA survey said one or more of their children have a diagnosed mental-health concern.
That group represents a small sample size compared to the overall survey, with 398 respondents in total. But they were negative about their experiences seeking care for their children: 72 per cent rated the overall quality of the health-system as either bad or very bad at meeting their child’s needs, and they noted problems navigating resources and getting timely access to referrals.
Dr. Bonnie Islam, a pediatrician and associate teaching professor at the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Medicine, said doctors have been “taken aback” by the number of kids being hospitalized for mental-health issues.
“What we’ve been saying is we’ve always been dealing with a crisis in pediatric mental health — just now, the numbers have exponentially risen,” she said.
Islam added that some parents seeking help are told their child’s mental-health issues “aren’t severe enough” to be prioritized on a long waiting list.
“It’s really very disheartening, because you’re basically telling parents, ‘This doesn’t matter,’ or you’re telling the child you’ve brought, ‘You don’t actually have a problem.'”
Data from the AMA survey was weighted to reflect gender, age and region of Albertans who have used the health system in the past year.
Because online panels are based on a non-random sample, a margin of error isn’t applicable. But as a comparison, if the data were collected through a random sample, the a margin of error would be +/-3.7 per cent, 19 times out of 20, with a 95 per cent confidence interval.
masmith@postmedia.com
@meksmith
Alberta doctors say children’s mental health needs “urgent attention” as a new survey offers a snapshot of escalating issues among the province’s youth.
© David BloomThe Stollery Children's Hospital Emergency entrance.
In an online panel survey conducted from May 4-17 via the Alberta Medical Association’s albertapatients.ca platform, 713 parents answered questions about how the COVID-19 pandemic affected their children’s health. Two-thirds of the parents surveyed said the mental health of at least one of their children is worse compared to before the pandemic began.
The results are especially stark for parents of high-school-aged kids, with 77 per cent of parents of children 15 and older reporting deteriorating mental health for their kids.
Health workers and youth advocates have previously raised alarm about the situation, reporting a spike in youth with eating disorders, as well as more young people seeking help for depression, anxiety, substance use and self-harm.
AMA president Dr. Michelle Warren said more needs to be done to make sure youth can access the treatment they need.
“This is something that needs urgent attention because it’s going to take a long time to get caught up on care that’s been delayed,” she said.
On Tuesday, the provincial government released details of their response to the Child and Youth Well-being Review , which gathered information over about two months in mid-2021 to determine how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected children and youth.
According to the province, they’re taking several new steps in response to the panel’s 10 broad recommendations. They include expanding “prevention and early intervention supports” like virtual counselling and in-school supports. The government is also spending $110 million over three years to help schools with “pandemic-related issues” like learning loss, school nutrition and mental health supports.
Provincial officials previously announced money to expand youth mental-health hubs and virtual counselling services.
Associate minister of mental health and addictions Mike Ellis said in a statement that improving youth mental health is a “top priority” for the provincial government.
Doctors ‘taken aback’ by number of kids hospitalized for mental-health issues
Warren, a rural family doctor, said there isn’t just one factor driving the current crisis. She’s seen patients struggle with isolation and being cut off from social supports during the pandemic, and many kids are also dealing with fear and anxiety about their health and their family’s safety. Some caught COVID themselves or saw loved ones hospitalized, or even killed, by the virus.
Nearly 60 per cent of the parents who responded to the AMA survey said one or more of their children have a diagnosed mental-health concern.
That group represents a small sample size compared to the overall survey, with 398 respondents in total. But they were negative about their experiences seeking care for their children: 72 per cent rated the overall quality of the health-system as either bad or very bad at meeting their child’s needs, and they noted problems navigating resources and getting timely access to referrals.
Dr. Bonnie Islam, a pediatrician and associate teaching professor at the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Medicine, said doctors have been “taken aback” by the number of kids being hospitalized for mental-health issues.
“What we’ve been saying is we’ve always been dealing with a crisis in pediatric mental health — just now, the numbers have exponentially risen,” she said.
Islam added that some parents seeking help are told their child’s mental-health issues “aren’t severe enough” to be prioritized on a long waiting list.
“It’s really very disheartening, because you’re basically telling parents, ‘This doesn’t matter,’ or you’re telling the child you’ve brought, ‘You don’t actually have a problem.'”
Data from the AMA survey was weighted to reflect gender, age and region of Albertans who have used the health system in the past year.
Because online panels are based on a non-random sample, a margin of error isn’t applicable. But as a comparison, if the data were collected through a random sample, the a margin of error would be +/-3.7 per cent, 19 times out of 20, with a 95 per cent confidence interval.
masmith@postmedia.com
@meksmith
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