Sept. 30, 2019 marks Orange shirt day, in recognition of the harm the residential school system did to children’s sense of self-esteem. Canada’s history includes the forced removal of many tens of thousands of Indigenous children from their families and communities, causing mental health effects over generations. Indigenous people have addressed this legacy, in part, by recreating their own governance structures and by running their own service agencies. Yet other Canadians can do more as well. As a society, we need to tackle the long-standing underfunding of basic health, education and social services for Indigenous children and families — addressing basic inequities compared with non-Indigenous children and families.
Author Archives: Daphne Gray-Grant
Early program addresses early adversity
Nurse-Family Partnership starts sooner than any other early childhood program, in early pregnancy. This allows it to influence development right from the start. This also means that the program has the potential to profoundly alter the trajectory of children’s lives, by focusing on helping families who are coping with adversities such as low income and housing insecurity. A journal article in BMC Public Health provides a baseline look at the B.C.-based study, currently ongoing.
Scientific evaluation studies program for moms & babies
The BC Healthy Connections Project is the first Canadian scientific evaluation of the Nurse-Family Partnership (NFP) program. NFP aims to help young first-time mothers and their children by providing intensive home visits by specially-trained public health nurses, starting early in pregnancy. The goals — as can be seen in the study’s baseline report — are to improve children’s mental health and development, while also improving the mothers’ lives.
Reduce suicide by treating underlying disorders
Suicide is the second-leading cause of death for 12- to 18-year-olds in BC (following motor vehicle accidents). Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2019 is World Suicide Prevention Day, aimed at raising awareness of the risks of suicide and funding suicide prevention activities around the globe. Many suicide-related deaths could be prevented by treating the underlying disorders that put young people at risk — particularly depression and problematic substance use. For more information, see Vol. 3, No. 4 of the Children’s Mental Health Research Quarterly.
Journal article reveals unacceptably high levels of socioeconomic disadvantage
A paper by the BC Healthy Connections Project team has just been published in the prestigious journal BMC Public Health.
This “baseline” paper provides a profile of participants in a BC-based scientific evaluation of the Nurse Family Partnership (NFP) program when they first entered the study, in early pregnancy. The paper reveals a group of girls and young women coping with substantial adversities. In addition to low income, most also face single parenthood, limited education, housing instability, severe anxiety or depression and experiences of maltreatment themselves when they were younger.
“Despite Canada’s public programs,” the paper concludes, “these pregnant girls and young women were not being adequately reached by social services. Our study adds new data to inform early intervention planning, suggesting that unacceptably high levels of socioeconomic disadvantage exist for some young British Columbians.”
The paper suggests that greater health and social supports and services are warranted for the young mothers and children involved, as well as for populations like them. The authors note that most of the adversities they have depicted are avoidable — with NFP being the starting point for prevention programming that can better support young families.
BMC Public Health is an open access, peer-reviewed journal, publishing articles on the epidemiology of disease and the understanding of all aspects of public health. The journal has a special focus on the social determinants of health, the environmental, behavioural, and occupational correlates of health and disease, and the impact of health policies, practices and interventions on the community.
A full copy of the paper may be seen here.
The BC Healthy Connections Project is continuing to follow these girls and young women and their children. Future reports will cover prenatal findings and the impact of NFP on child development and mental health when children reach age two years.
The British Columbia Healthy Connections Project: findings on socioeconomic disadvantage in early pregnancy
Nicole L. A. Catherine, Rosemary Lever, Debbie Sheehan, Yufei Zheng, Michael H. Boyle,
Lawrence McCandless, Amiram Gafni, Andrea Gonzalez, Susan M. Jack, Lil Tonmyr, Colleen Varcoe, Harriet L. MacMillan, Charlotte Waddell and For the British Columbia Healthy Connections Project Scientific Team. (2019, August). The British Columbia Healthy Connections Project: findings on socioeconomic disadvantage in early pregnancy. BMC Public Health.
Transforming education is the theme of Youth Day 2019
International Youth Day is being marked by the United Nations on August 12.
Our world currently has the largest youth population ever, some 1.8 billion young people between the ages of 10 and 24. The problem? More than half of all children and adolescents lack basic reading and math skills, despite attending school.
As a result, the theme of Youth Day 2019 is “transforming education.” The UN will be evaluating the efforts of governments to transform education so it can help lead to sustainable development. The goal is to make education systems more inclusive, equitable and relevant.
According to the UN, “the crucial role that quality education plays in youth development is well recognized.” But the organization goes on to say that youth-led organizations also play a large and important role in lobbying, advocacy and other efforts to improve education. For example, youth-led organizations are transforming education with lobbying and advocacy, partnerships with educational institutions, and by helping develop complementary training programs.
Many options for addressing common childhood mental health disorders
The Children’s Health Policy Centre has completed two companion systematic reviews — on childhood behaviour disorders and on childhood anxiety. Published in the journal Evidence-Based Mental Health these reviews outline effective interventions, including medications, across the entire prevention-to-treatment continuum. The bottom line from both reviews is that there is strong research evidence that we can prevent both behaviour and anxiety disorders in childhood, thereby averting much avoidable adversity early in life. There is also strong evidence that we can treat these disorders effectively, particularly making use of psychosocial interventions such as cognitive-behavioural therapy.
Six decades of preventing and treating childhood anxiety disorders: A systematic review and meta-analysis to inform policy and practice
Christine Schwartz, Jenny Lou Barican, Donna Yung, Yufei Zheng, Charlotte Waddell (2019, July). Six decades of preventing and treating childhood anxiety disorders: A systematic review and meta-analysis to inform policy and practice. Evidence-Based Mental Health. Continue reading
Celebrating National Child and Youth Mental Health Day
National Child and Youth Mental Health Day is being marked in Canada on May 7.
In honour of the day, the Children’s Health Policy Centre has timed the release of the 50th issue of its Quarterly publication about children’s mental health research. This celebratory edition is titled Celebrating children’s mental health: 50 lessons learned.
The purpose of the issue is to present effective interventions and all the “good news” we know about how to safeguard children’s mental health.
National Child and Youth Mental Health Day was started in 2007 by the Vancouver-based Institute of Families for Child & Youth Mental Health. It is intended to create awareness and acknowledgement of the thousands of children, youth, and families needing mental health support and care across Canada.