Health committee  I'll try to be very quick, to give time for our other witness. The virtual care is crucial. We had it generally before the pandemic. Obviously, the pandemic forced us all to be doing it. In 2022, despite most of our patients having the physical ability and COVID ability to come

Health committee  The ASARI is different from a lot of assessment tools. It's not intended to score risk. What it is intended to do is to allow the clinician to completely document what they're thinking and to communicate what they're thinking about suicide risk. It's accredited. It's used in pl

Health committee  To develop evidence like that would be challenging. If we want causal evidence, we usually do things like randomized control trials, and it would be pretty unethical to put people on wait-lists and see. I think what we typically see, though, is that many of the patients I see in

Health committee  Yes. It's challenging to do.

Health committee  Absolutely.

Health committee  Absolutely. We know that the socio-economic determinants of health are correlated. I'm happy to forward some links to the clerk to share with the committee. There's recently been a study even linking suicide rates in children and adolescents to poverty. It is a variable that we c

Health committee  Every jurisdiction that I've known, including B.C., struggles with wait-lists and access to care. I don't think I'm aware of a Canadian jurisdiction that is completely nailing it. I do think, overall as a country, we spend less per capita on mental health than do most developed n

Health committee  I'll leave those decisions to those with the expertise. I would say more money is good.

Health committee  The why is always challenging. We notice this. Anyone who works with children knows that they are more busy during the school year. When school get's out, there's just less busyness. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that school is like a job for kids. School has your co-w

Health committee  Absolutely. I think that psychiatry and medicine and, generally, colonizing society has to come to grips with the fact that there's been significant trauma and mistreatment delivered to indigenous families on the basis of care. Indigenous families need a voice at the table. It's

Health committee  If we're referring to the percentage of children who use substances, that number has been steadily coming down for years.

Health committee  Marijuana remains inaccessible to children, even under legalization, but of course, children, since the dawn of marijuana, have had access to marijuana through other routes. The statistics we're starting to get—and, of course, legalization is a recent phenomenon—suggest that we h

Health committee  Should I start again?

Health committee  Numbers have been coming down. What I see typically is that every generation, every new wave of kids I work with seems more responsible, more connected, more socially engaged and more caring about outcomes. I know there's a feeling sometimes that things are getting worse and wor

Health committee  I think when we're working with children, especially in the teenaged years, we often have to recognize how important it is at that stage of their life to figure out who they are, what they're doing and to have autonomy and responsibility. That means, as a parent, when you have th