Thank you for the question.
In answer to your other question about the 2:1 ratio, between menarche and menopause, depression and anxiety are twice as common in girls and women as they are in men. It's thought that this is because of some of the unique reproductive issues we were talking about related to menstruation and pregnancy, as well as because of the fact that women and girls are disproportionately affected by risk factors for mental illness, as we've heard today, like violence, poverty, lack of education, etc. That's what feeds into that.
Unfortunately, as you said, a healthy parent means a healthy baby. We talk about how the years before five last the rest of their lives. You actually need to take a step even further back and say that if we could make our young parents well during pregnancy, that could prevent issues in children and youth's mental health down the road. When I talk about the fact that we know that in Canada as few as one in five pregnant and postpartum people have the support they need, that's a big problem.
What can the federal government do? One of the things would be—and this has been done before—to fund community organizations across the country to deliver peer support to specific populations—adolescents or indigenous populations, for example.
My time is up, but if I had to prioritize one thing, I would say that if we could do that, we could make a huge inroad.