Centre for Addiction and Mental Health study<\/a>, the number of people reporting moderate to serious psychological distress more than doubled\u00a0\u2014 from 17.7 per cent in 2019 to 36.7 per cent in 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n\u201cI think we are living in scary times.\u201d\u00a0said Dr. Kwame McKenzie, CEO of the Wellesley Institute, a professor at the University of Toronto\u2019s department of psychiatry and co-author of the study. \u201cIt did accelerate during the pandemic, but we\u2019ve been on this road of deteriorating mental health for a decade.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thrive Toronto is a coalition that brings together partners from municipal government, community organizations, health care and public health. It used data from Statistics Canada, CAMH, Ontario Health and the Toronto Mental Health and Addictions Access Point to assess the mental health of Torontonians.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In reflecting upon what people are feeling, Dr. Suze Berkhout, an associate professor at the University of Toronto\u2019s department of psychiatry and a clinician-investigator in the University Health Network\u2019s Centre for Mental Health, referenced the social policy concept of \u201cwicked problems.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wicked problems, in a nutshell, are complex, seemingly insurmountable challenges driven by social, global and policy forces with solutions that can work against each other; for example, clearing a massive plot of valuable land to build housing, while also causing ecological devastation.<\/p>\n
But they can also manifest in our daily lives\u00a0\u2014 for example, a single mom working three jobs to put food on the table and pay for daycare, while also finding she\u2019s unable to spend enough time with her children.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat sort of fear and uncertainty and precarity is going to be exacerbated by political, economic and environmental crises that certainly seem like they are exploding around us,\u201d Berkhout said.<\/p>\n
These feelings can make us feel trapped, alienated, aimless and anxious, even when it seems like things are going OK.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven when there are actually all these great things that might be going on (in your life), it can all feel very overwhelming and pressing,\u201d Berkhout said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow do you pull levers in a system that is so far beyond what\u2019s within your control?\u201d<\/p>\n
\nHow Torontonians are struggling
\nA recent study by Thrive Toronto says 52 per cent of people in Toronto reported having good mental health, down from 73 per cent in 2015.\n<\/p>\n
14%<\/p>\n
of Torontonians were classified as moderately or severely food insecure.<\/p>\n
32%<\/p>\n
The share of of the population that reported finding it \u201cdifficult\u201d or \u201cvery difficult\u201d for their household to meet its financial needs in terms of transportation, housing, food, clothing and other necessary expenses.<\/p>\n
28%<\/p>\n
of Torontonians reported high levels of work stress.<\/p>\n
15%<\/p>\n
of Torontonians reported they felt they had low job security.<\/p>\n
22%<\/p>\n
reported a high level of life stress.<\/p>\n
22%<\/p>\n
reported lacking sufficient support from others to cope with their biggest source of daily stress.<\/p>\n
Source: Thrive Toronto<\/p>\n
Toronto Star graphic<\/p>\n
How social media is harming kids<\/p>\n
It may come as no surprise that the report linked certain stressors to lower mental health. Challenging working conditions, financial difficulties and time pressures were among top stressors.<\/p>\n
Certain segments of the population are affected more than others. People who reported adverse childhood experiences, had experienced discrimination, hadn\u2019t graduated high school or were members of the LBGTQ community all reported higher levels of mental distress, with all groups falling well below the Toronto average among those who\u00a0reported high perceived mental health.<\/p>\n
Youth, by far, reported the most concerning results. Only 41 per cent of youth ages 18-24 reported high perceived mental health. That number drops to 33 per cent for youth under 18\u00a0\u2014 the lowest of all demographics.<\/p>\n
\u201cKids are not doing well at all …\u00a0The main problem with the kids struggling is we don\u2019t have a good strategy for helping them,\u201d McKenzie said.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s more difficult to be a kid these days, McKenzie said,\u00a0which is exacerbated by social media and the pressure to present a certain image of themselves online.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I was a kid I was just a kid. Now the questions are, are you trendy? Are you buff? Kids are being asked to do all sorts of things and grow up quicker than ever before,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
One of the most notable findings was that 46 per cent of young people reported feeling depressed about the future because of climate change.<\/p>\n
McKenzie pointed to what some officials in other jurisdictions are doing; he said in Australia, if a youth tells a health professional they\u2019re worried about climate change, doctors are advised to encourage youth to get involved in doing something about it. In the United Kingdom, they appointed a minister of loneliness to combat widespread social isolation.<\/p>\n
While youth are a particularly vulnerable group, McKenzie emphasized we need a multi-pronged approach to help all individuals who are struggling.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe should be able to do more than one thing and we shouldn\u2019t leave whole groups behind.\u201d<\/p>\n
Acting before a crisis point<\/p>\n
When it comes to kids, McKenzie said we need a proactive system that focuses more on helping youth flourish, well before their mental health reaches a crisis point.<\/p>\n
He pointed to activities that are proven to lead to better outcomes: local clubs, healthy evening activities, volunteering and outside exercise.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll of those things that people used to do …need to be brought back,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
But he added that we also need greater access to community mental health services, more affordable housing, and more support for families who are experiencing food insecurity or other financial pressures.<\/p>\n
The key, McKenzie says, is to get people to a healthy place before they reach that point of desperation.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would argue that if the government spent as much time trying to decrease the number of people who need services, they would probably do better. Because at the moment, service need is outstripping service provision.\u201d<\/p>\n
The need for social connection<\/p>\n
A key human need in feeling \u201cOK\u201d is social connection, and not the kind we find on social media or texting, said\u00a0Steve Joordens, a psychologist and professor at U of T who has studied conscious and unconscious influences.<\/p>\n
When people are hungry, they know they need to eat, or when they\u2019re thirsty, they know they need to drink. But the need for connection and belonging is more unconscious, but just as crucial for health and happiness, Joordens said.<\/p>\n
\u2018When people don\u2019t quite understand this feeling \u2026 it\u2019s telling them they need social connection,\u201d Joordens said.<\/p>\n
Ideally, each person would have three or four people in their life who deeply care about them, who they know would be there during difficult times.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThose people become our insulators to stress,\u201d Joordens said. \u201cAnd so many people have lost that social connection.\u201d<\/p>\n
Poverty, housing, health care, education and the environment are massive issues that need massive responses. And thinking about them can be overwhelming.<\/p>\n
On an individual level, sometimes we need to look critically at our frame of reference and recognize that we can\u2019t solve everything on our own, Berkhout said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes that means recognizing I\u2019m doing the best that I can in a set of circumstances that are being governed by these wicked problems,\u201d Berkhout said. \u201cYou sort of pause, to recognize this is hard, and that I am doing what I can in this moment.\u201d<\/p>\n
Picture yourself on a sailboat on that roiling sea.\u00a0You may not know where you\u2019re going, or even where you want to go. You may be unsure of which direction the winds are blowing.<\/p>\n
But what you really need is an anchor. That anchor can be your family, your friends, your partner, your career or your aspirations.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow is it that you can create that sense of yourself, that sort of anchor?\u201d Berkhout said. \u201cWhat is it in this moment that I can kind of hang on to that anchors me? That\u2019s the same answer to the bigger questions.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"During times of stress and uncertainty, it can feel like we\u2019re adrift on a roiling\u00a0sea. It\u2019s a sense…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":427297,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[97,259,260],"class_list":["post-427296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-health","tag-mental-health","tag-mentalhealth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=427296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427296\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/427297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=427296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=427296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=427296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}