Updates

Recently invited to deliver a Lager Lecture at McMaster University, Children’s Health Policy Director Charlotte Waddell spoke on Children’s Mental Health and COVID-19.

Speaking via Zoom on Feb. 24, Waddell began by describing the high level of children’s mental health needs prior to the pandemic.

Following the pandemic, she said, it’s expected that prolonged disruptions and diverted public resources will lead to additional hardships. Worldwide, somewhere between 42 and 46 million more children are expected to fall into extreme poverty with reduced access to basic healthcare, food and vaccines.

As well, she noted, school closures imposed by nearly 200 countries have affected 85 per cent — or 1.4 billion children — worldwide.

Citing a 2020 conclusion from the United Nations Waddell said, “Children are not the face of this pandemic but they risk being among its biggest victims.” It will be most damaging for those who are already experiencing the most disadvantage, she added.

Addressing the issue of cost, Waddell pointed out that 94 percent of provincial health budgets in Canada go to hospitals, drugs and physicians while only six percent goes to public health, including prevention.

“That low figure towards public health gives us a couple of clues about why we’ve had to scramble to respond to COVID,” she said — arguing that where government is prepared to spend more money on public health, it can realize great savings. In the US, for example, preventing just one case of a severe childhood problem such as conduct disorder can yield savings of more than $8 million CAD over a lifetime.

Waddell was invited to give the speech as a recent inductee to McMaster University’s Alumni Gallery. Waddell earned her MD from McMaster where she completed residencies in Family Medicine and Psychiatry. In 2006, she was recruited by SFU to take up the Canada Research Chair in Children’s Health Policy, Tier 2, and to become director of the Children’s Health Policy Centre.

The roughly 30-minute speech was followed by a lively question and answer session. The whole video may be viewed here.

Children are not the immediate face of COVID-19, but they are the face of its future.

That is the key message of a recent article in the Globe and Mail newspaper, co-authored by Children’s Health Policy director Charlotte Waddell.

Written with senior academics from McMaster University, the Toronto Hospital for Sick Children and the University of Ottawa, the piece argues that unlike other countries, Canada does not have a national long-term study of children and youth. The need for such evidence on childhood health and well-being was urgent before COVID-19 and is even more urgent now.

But there is also some coincidental good news. Statistics Canada conducted a survey on children and youth in 2019, which means there are pre-pandemic data about how children were doing before COVID-19. (This survey involved a nationally, representative sample of more than 42,000 children aged 1 to 17 years across the country.)

The article argues that, “investing in a comprehensive follow-up survey represents our best opportunity to obtain accurate information about how the pandemic is affecting all Canadian children, and how some are being disproportionately affected.”

Such a follow up survey would also create a unique opportunity to assess how COVID-19′s impact may have differed across provinces and territories. As a result, it could also assess the impact of various public health and policy responses.

Should mental health be taught in school? Yes, according to Charlotte Waddell, the director the Children’s Health Policy Centre, speaking in a recent interview with the Tyee.

Waddell said that anxiety — what it is and how to deal with it — would be a highly appropriate topic for all students from kindergarten to high school. “Anxiety would be a fantastic teaching module — for example, the physiological reactions that everybody has experienced, that are in some ways evolutionary and protective when there’s a threat.”

“Then you couple that with: What are healthy responses for managing anxiety? How do you know when it starts to tip into something that’s not as helpful for you?” Waddell said.

But Waddell also noted that only 44 per cent of young people experiencing a mental disorder in B.C. are getting access to treatment. And we wouldn’t accept such low treatment numbers for illnesses such as cancer or diabetes. So mental healthcare for young people has a long way to go.

As well, COVID is likely to lead to increases in anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress among youth who’ve been quarantined or isolated. This makes dealing with questions relating to mental health even more urgent, she says.

For details of the Centre’s report on COVID to the B.C. Representative of Children and Youth, see here.

Read the whole story on mental health education here.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Canada has a unique opportunity to be a world leader in children’s mental health, according to Charlotte Waddell, director of the Children’s Health Policy Centre.

Speaking in an interview with the CBC public affairs radio program The House, Waddell said that nearly 800,000 Canadian children are already coping with mental disorders and this will only worsen with the pandemic.

Based on evidence from previous public health disasters, such as SARS and floods, “we anticipate the needs will increase dramatically — perhaps two to tenfold,” she said. In particular, anxiety, behaviour problems, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are all expected to increase.

But the good news is that Statistics Canada recently completed a high-quality survey of 45,000 children, just before the pandemic began. According to Waddell, this “trove of pre-pandemic data” gives us the opportunity to repeat the survey to compare pre- and post-pandemic numbers.

Such analysis will lead to better, more strategic support for children. “We have an ethical imperative to act,” Waddell says. “And if we don’t act, we run the risk of causing damage to a generation of kids.”

The complete interview with The House can be heard here.