Good morning, Mr. Chair and committee members. Thanks for the opportunity to share with you some information about mental health in Canada.
The most recent comprehensive data on the mental health of Canadians comes from the 2012 Canadian community health survey on mental health. Most of the data for this presentation comes from that survey. It covers people aged 15 and older in all provinces, but not the territories, aboriginal reserves and settlements, the Canadian Armed Forces, or the homeless. Since it is a cross-sectional survey, I will talk about associations, but will not be able to draw conclusions about causation.
I’ll be referring to mental or substance use disorders. In this survey, respondents were not asked to self-identify. Instead, they were asked a series of questions about symptoms experienced and the types of behaviours they engaged in. Then, based on their responses, they were classified as having met the criteria for a mental or substance use disorder.
Unless otherwise noted, disorders discussed in this presentation are based on having met the criteria for a disorder in the 12 months prior to the survey. Six disorders were measured in the survey: depression, bipolar disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, alcohol abuse or dependence, cannabis abuse or dependence, and other drug abuse or dependence.
We have provided a profile on how mental and substance use disorders vary across a number of demographic and social groups. Since there are too many graphs to go into detail on each, I'll start with a summary of the results and then draw your attention to several key findings, leaving the details in some of the charts for your reference or questions later.
To summarize the main points of all the charts to come, many people experience a mental health problem at some point in their lives. Women have higher rates of mental disorders while men have higher rates of substance use disorders. Vulnerable groups include youth, people who aren't married or common law, single parents, those with low incomes, aboriginal people, those with a history of homelessness, and those who had childhood maltreatment. Immigrants were an exception in that they have lower rates of disorder compared to the Canadian born.
Now that I’ve given away the main points, I’ll focus on a few of the slides in more detail. On slide 5, overall, about 10% of people met the criteria for one of the disorders in the past 12 months. The proportion of Canadians with a mental disorder was about double that of those with a substance use disorder, 6% versus 3%. While not shown on this chart, it is important to note that about 1% of Canadians had both a mental and substance use disorder.
On slide 6, the numbers we've been looking at refer to the 10% of people who experienced a mental or substance use disorder in the year before they were interviewed. To add some context, about a third of Canadians reported having experienced symptoms of a disorder at some point in their lives. The good news is that we can see that most of these people didn’t experience symptoms in the 12 months prior to the interview.
Moving on to the prevalence among certain age groups on slide 7, we see that overall those aged 15 to 24 were at a higher risk of having a disorder, almost one in five. The overall rates of disorders then declined as age increased. This contrast by age is mostly attributable to substance use disorders. Those aged 15 to 24 show a higher prevalence of substance use disorders than any other age group.
While not shown here, 3% of those between the ages of 15 and 24 had both a mental and substance use disorder, a significantly higher proportion than the overall average, which was 1%. By contrast, the proportion of people with a mental disorder was about equal for all age groups, with the exception of those aged 65 and older.
On slide 8, when taking income into consideration, a larger proportion of those with an annual household income under $20,000 had a mental or substance use disorder compared to all other income groups. Just under 20% of Canadians with an annual income of less than $20,000 reported a disorder, while for all other income groups, the range was between 8% and 11%.
In relation to income and disorders, it is of interest to note that there was a higher prevalence of disorders among those who relied primarily on social benefits as their main source of income. More specifically, about three in 10 Canadians who stated that social benefits were their main source of income had a disorder compared to one in 10 of those who relied primarily on employment.
We know that household income has different implications, depending on a number of factors, such as family size and location, so we asked respondents if they felt their income was enough to cover their basic expenses. Those who said they had difficulty covering basic expenses were more than twice as likely to have had a disorder than those who felt their income was sufficient.
On slide 9, related to the finding on social benefits, we see that people who were permanently unable to work had higher rates of mental or substance use disorders than those with other working statuses.
Slide 13 looks at rates of disorder among parents with children under 18 living at home. We see that single parents experienced rates of mental or substance use disorders about double that of their married or common-law counterparts.
On slide 14, we see that immigrants are a group that is overall better off, with rates of disorder that are half that of those born in Canada. This may mask vulnerable subgroups such as refugees, but we don't have this data by subgroup. Although it's not shown on this slide, we also looked at visible minority status. There are no differences by visible minority status once immigrant status is taken into consideration. Before that, the visible minorities had lower rates.
Moving to slide 16, this last comparison has to do with childhood experience of maltreatment. Previous research has suggested a link between early childhood maltreatment and an increased likelihood of developing a disorder. In this survey, childhood maltreatment was measured as experiencing specific types of physical maltreatment or sexual abuse at least once before the age of 16. Results from the survey are consistent with previous research, as they indicate that almost 14% of adults who had experienced childhood maltreatment had a disorder, compared to 6% among those who had not experienced maltreatment—more than double.
To sum up, as I mentioned earlier, other vulnerable groups that we have provided data for but have not discussed in detail include aboriginal people; single, divorced, and separated people; and people with a history of homelessness.
I hope this mental health profile of Canadians is useful for your work.