Overall, immigrants reported more concern about their health and social consequences of the pandemic than did Canadian-born individuals. These concerns are about issues such as their own health, household members' health, risk of civil disorder, violence in the home, family stress from confinement, and maintaining social ties.
On slide nine, turning to the health of Canadians designated as visible minorities, we see signs of poorer mental health compared to those identifying as white Canadians. Almost 28% of those designated as visible minorities reported fair or poor self-rated mental health compared to 23%. Reporting of moderate or severe symptoms of anxiety was also higher for visible minority Canadians than for those identifying as white Canadians.
On slide 10, crowd-sourced data also indicates more impacts of the pandemic on first nations people, Métis, and Inuit. The slide reflects mental health disparities between indigenous and non-indigenous people, with higher percentages of indigenous participants reporting worsening mental health, high stress and symptoms of anxiety. When asked how their mental health has changed since physical distancing began, 60% of indigenous participants indicated that it has become somewhat worse or much worse. A higher percentage of indigenous women also reported worsening of their mental health.
Slide 11 shows some of the factors that influence the mental health disparities, observed on the previous slide, between indigenous and non-indigenous Canadians.
I'll skip now to slide 12. On that slide, the final group that we will profile today are Canadians living with long-term conditions and disabilities. Using crowd-sourced data, we see that over half of the participants with long-term conditions or a disability reported having worse mental health than they had before the start of the pandemic. During the June-July collection, more than half reported that their mental health was fair or poor.
On the last slide, slide 13, the data presents a relatively consistent picture of how the pandemic has had negative impacts on the mental health of Canadians as a whole and has had greater impacts across a range of already vulnerable groups in Canada.
Statistics Canada is committed to working with partners to increase the information available on the impact of the pandemic on mental health. To showcase some of how we're moving forward, I've listed here a few examples of initiatives: the two independent waves covered by the Survey on COVID-19 and Mental Health, the survey of mental health and stressful events, as well as our active participation in Health Canada's expert round table on mental health data needs and related challenges.
Thank you very much.