Most Canadian students are still feeling the negative mental health effects of dealing with the pandemic, according to a new study.
Among the findings, the majority of Canadian students said that their mental health “has been negatively impacted” by the pandemic. Three out of four students reported that the pandemic had negatively impacted their mental health for the third year in a row, 74 percent said that the pandemic has worsened their mental health challenges, and 61 percent said it created “new mental health struggles.”
The study points noted that young people aged 18 to 25 years are particularly vulnerable to mental health disorders, leading to what it says is a “mental health crisis across Canadian campuses.”
Compared to 2021, the percentage of students who reported feeling stressed about the pandemic was the same as last year at 75 percent. Twenty-five percent of students this year said that their mental health was poor.
Seventy percent of those surveyed reported their ability to “maintain social connections has been negatively impacted,” while 68 percent said the pandemic had “worsened their overall health, negatively impacting their physical activity levels, diets, and ability to maintain social connections.”
Fifty percent of students said they had accessed mental health services through their post-secondary institution. Personal counselling was the most popular form of support, and 60 percent of students preferred in-person rather than virtual counselling.
The top barriers to accessing the services cited by students were waiting times (65 percent), ignorance of services or how to access them (63 percent), and perceived quality of services (63 percent).
The top drivers in supporting positive mental health were reported as relationships with friends, relationships with family, and stable housing. In contrast, the top drivers for negative mental health were poor sleeping habits, cost of living, academic workload, financial responsibilities, and job/career pressures.
The study noted that government spending to expand support for young people in 2021 was substantial, with investments to ease student loans and almost $1.5 billion to promote youth employment. However, it said that “new investments announced in the 2022 Federal Budget were comparatively small, confined to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields.”
“Though these investments are welcomed, strong and sustained investments in student mental health are needed to mitigate the impacts of COVID-19 on students,” the report stated.
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