Mental health has been a concern for a long time. COVID has magnified, amplified and intensified the need for our understanding and recognition of the importance of mental health.
The research is clear. People who are trying to balance work and family and provide care during COVID are indicating their mental health has been impacted. We need to know where people are going for help. The first place they tend to go is their personal circle of support—their friends, colleagues, family members and extended family members. They're reaching out to each other. Then they go to their first circle of public support—usually their family physician. The family physicians are often the ones who have to give them the bad news that mental health services and treatment are really difficult to access. It's then that the pressure starts to build on these individuals and their families.
We have been conducting a study with family therapists across the country, and asking them what's coming through their doors. We're asking how well the therapists are doing, caring for those caregivers and those individuals dealing with their loneliness, anxieties and depression. We're seeing that family therapists, psychologists and sociologists across the country providing these services are finding that e-health and telehealth, providing counselling over the phone or over the Internet, is making it more accessible to more people. They're increasing access.
For some, they're indicating that it's increasing their effectiveness by being able to schedule these routines. They are also able to provide therapy while people are in their own environment. It provides them with a lot of information they wouldn't otherwise receive.
It's something we need to continue to monitor. Clearly, there is a shortage of mental health services. Certainly, from the COVID experience, telehealth and tele-counselling experiences are going to reshape mental health services for decades to come.