When we spoke to our branches across the country, people talked about the fact that the demands for service had gone so high that there were waiting lists in most of the areas we were looking at. At CMHA Toronto, there was a 300% increase in demand for youth programs. At CMHA Edmonton, there was a 200% increase in calls just related to income support and employment needs.
What our CMHA workers found was that they were being asked to do things way beyond mental health. They were asked to help provide food. They were volunteering at vaccine clinics. They were doing everything they could to make sure their communities were healthy and cared for. Because our community mental health organizations are underfunded at the best of times, it just means that this incredible demand, with phones ringing off the hook, has led to burnout for a lot of our workers.
If we look at nurses who work for CMHA, we see that they are underpaid, compared to hospital-based or private nurses working in mental health care. We have underpaid, overworked health care workers in mental health, and we believe that things like investment in community health would go a long way to mitigate that.