Students speak out about need for more mental health supports at school

Educators, health-care providers, government officials and community members filled a room on Thursday to hear directly from students at a youth forum on mental health in Fredericton.

Ché Greene, one of the students speaking to about 100 people at the event, said it's important to hear directly from young people.

Greene started a mental health council at his school on Grand Manan that focuses on peer-to-peer support. He said it's important to be able to talk about shared experiences with people of a similar age and to know "they're going through the same things you are and enduring it."

"Being able to make those connections with people that you can really relate to and get down on that level with them, I think that is probably one of the most important aspects of youth mental health," he said. 

Joshua Clark, a Grade 11 student at Harrison Trimble High School in Moncton and a member of the New Brunswick Youth Council, traces his mental health issues back to Grade 5, when he started at a new school. He said those challenges continued throughout middle and high school.

Clark told the forum he found help through therapy and a kids help line.

He said teachers can play an important role in a student's mental health, picking up on behavioural changes or signs of struggling. Clark said they can "basically be that third parent for someone or even a fifth parent. It can be that extra level of support that someone can have."

'Our kids are suffering'

New Brunswick's child and youth advocate wants to see more creative approaches to deal with a spike in young people experiencing urgent levels of mental health problems.

In his latest report, From Couch to Crisis, Kelly Lamrock pointed to recent figures showing nearly one quarter of children between 9 and 19 are suffering from a mental disorder. Girls, as well as youth who are 2SLGBTQ+, neurodivergent or newcomers are all at greater risk, he said.

"Our kids are suffering, and we need to put that single fact above all else," said Lamrock.

Many Western democracies are experiencing spikes in anxiety, depression and suicidal ideation, he said, and he's calling on the government to respond in a way that "is a little more nimble, a little more creative."

"We know that most mental health issues present for the first time in childhood and adolescence, which is why school-based mental health support systems are vitally important and need to be well resourced."

More school support needed, especially in rural areas

Twenty-two per cent of mental health services for youth are delivered by schools, according to Lamrock's report, which said "facilitation and support of educators and clear communication and support for parents, schools, and communities is critical."

Peter Lagacy, president of the New Brunswick Teachers' Association, agrees more supports are needed in the school system, especially in rural areas that may not have a lot of other options for mental health care. 

"It would be great to have in every school community … access to services including school psychologists and social workers and nurses," Legacy said.

More support in schools would relieve some of the pressure on people like Sarah Gander, a pediatrician in Saint John. 

She said children and young people often end up in her office because of a lack of supports at school and in the community, especially ones that are covered by medicare.

"So they come to me and that's the bottleneck," she said. "And I think we're recognizing that now more than ever before, and saying 'we need to do something different if we're going to actually meet the need.'"

When she started her practice as a pediatrician, Gander said roughly a third of her referrals were related to mental health, neurodiversity or development. That has since increased to "well over 60 or 70 per cent," she said.

"And frankly, of the remaining 30 per cent, 60 per cent of that is probably actually mental health disguised as abdominal pain or headaches or what have you. So this is not just a psychiatry problem. It's an everybody problem."

Gander said sometimes a referral to a pediatrician or a psychiatrist is the right route. But she would like to see resources meet students where they are, often in schools, to catch more of these issues upstream.

With a shortage of psychologists and other health professionals, Lamrock believes New Brunswick must deal with a training deficit but must also find other means of supporting young people.

"Finding ways to give communities the skills so there are caring people around who can help peers navigate, who can put kids around more trusted adults — the more we can do with that, the better," he said.