Thank you so much to Madam Chair, members and staff of the Standing Committee on the Status of Women.
I am thrilled to be here today. My name is Alisa Simon and I am with Kids Help Phone.
For over 33 years, Kids Help Phone has been on the front lines hearing from young people from coast to coast to coast and from every single province. We hear from young people starting from about the age of five and we have no upper age limit. Young people come as long as they want and use our stepped care model to find the kinds of services and supports they need.
We have always been a critical part of the mental health infrastructure and system for young people, but since COVID, that need has exponentially grown. In fact, since the beginning of COVID, Kids Help Phone has supported young people over 12 million times, which is a significant increase from 2019 when we supported young people about 1.9 million times.
Of the young people who reach out to us at Kids Help Phone, 74% identify as female. They reach out about every challenge a young person experiences, from bullying, depression, anxiety and relationship issues to suicide.
Although we hear from young girls and women across the age spectrum, 46% of our users are in the age range of 14 to 17, which is a particularly important time in the development of young girls. We see that the challenges they're facing change over time, which makes sense for anyone who is around young girls and young women.
Not surprisingly, younger girls come to us in very high numbers about bullying and relationship challenges. In fact, girls aged five to 13 are 120% more likely to talk about bullying and cyber-bullying. That is quite detrimental to the well-being of young girls. We know that it can lead to anxiety, poor body image and lowered school performance.
It is also worth noting that younger girls are more likely to reach out to us about eating disorder and body image challenges. In fact, girls aged five to 13 are 34% more likely to reach out about those challenges.
As girls age, their challenges change. We see, for example, that 18- to 24-year-olds are more likely to come to talk about anxiety and stress. Interestingly, over the course of COVID, young women aged 25 and older have been coming 60% more often to talk about grief, which I think makes sense given so many of the losses we have all gone through over the course of the pandemic.
Perhaps most sobering is our data on suicide. Over the last five years, we have seen a significant increase in young people reaching out to talk about suicidality. In fact, about 23% of all girls and young women who connect with Kids Help Phone are reaching out about suicide. Of girls aged 14 to 17 who connect with us, 45% are talking about suicide. Perhaps even more surprising is that 21% of girls aged five to 13 talk about suicide. I think that is quite shocking to many people, as we don't anticipate that younger girls are even thinking about issues around suicide.
The good news I want to make sure I leave people with is that we are able to help the vast majority of young people who reach out to us. We are able to form a safety plan with them. Only about 2% of our contacts of people talking about suicide require an emergency referral.
I also feel it's really important to focus on equity-deserving populations, such as indigenous, Black and 2SLGBTQ+ people and newcomers. We know their experience in Canada and their experiences around social determinants of health are not the same. We know from our data that they are all struggling with one thing in common, which is isolation and feeling disconnected from others like them.
Social isolation can lead to a lot of negative outcomes and it seems particularly prevalent for equity-deserving populations. One reason we started our peer support service last year was specifically so that young people can connect to others.
Our data also demonstrates, for example, the incredible impact of racism and discrimination on young people from equity-deserving populations. After the murder of George Floyd in 2020, we found that young people who reached out and discussed racism were more distressed than any other service user, except for those who feared harm in their own home. They were more likely than any other service user to discuss suicide.
In closing, I have three recommendations.
We need to focus on equity-deserving populations and the specific needs they have.
We need more in school supports at every age along the spectrum to not only talk about mental health, but equally important, to talk about seeking help, what it means to not feel good and why reaching out is important. Kids Help Phone has been doing this in middle schools for many years, and just launched a high school program. Next year we will be launching an elementary school program.