Educators, health care providers, government officials and community members filled a room Thursday to hear directly from students at a youth forum on mental health in Fredericton.

Ché Greene, one of the students who spoke to about 100 people at the event, said it’s important to hear directly from young people.

Greene started a mental health council at her school in Grand Manan that focuses on peer-to-peer support. He said it’s important to be able to talk about shared experiences with people of a similar age and to know that “they’re going through the same things as you and enduring it.”

“Being able to make those connections with people that you can really relate to and get down on that level with them, I think that’s probably one of the most important aspects of youth mental health,” he said.

Joshua Clark, a Grade 11 student at Harrison Trimble High School in Moncton and a member of the New Brunswick Youth Council, traces his mental health issues back to Grade 5, when he started a new school. He said those challenges continued throughout middle and high school.

Clark told the forum that he got help through therapy and a children’s helpline.

He said teachers can play an important role in a student’s mental health, by spotting behavioral changes or signs of struggling. Clark said they “can basically be the third parent to someone or even a fifth parent. It can be that extra level of support that someone can have.”

“Our children are suffering”

New Brunswick child and youth advocates want to see more creative approaches to dealing with an increase in young people experiencing acute levels of mental health problems.

In her latest report, From Couch to Crisis, Kelly Lamrock pointed to recent figures showing that almost a quarter of children between the ages of 9 and 19 suffer from a mental disorder. Girls, as well as youth who are 2SLGBTQ+, neurodivergent or newcomers are all at greater risk, he said.

“Our children are suffering, and we have to put that one fact above everything else,” Lamrock said.

Many Western democracies are experiencing spikes in anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts, he said, and he is urging the government to respond in a way that “is a little more nimble, a little more creative.”

“We know that most mental health problems first arise in childhood and adolescence, which is why school-based mental health support systems are extremely important and must be well resourced.”

More school support is needed, especially in rural areas

Twenty-two percent of youth mental health services are provided by schools, according to Lamrock’s report, which says “facilitation and support for educators and clear communication and support for parents, schools and communities are critical.”

Peter Lagacy, president of the New Brunswick Teachers’ Association, agrees that more support is needed in the school system, especially in rural areas that may not have many other options for mental health care.

“It would be good to have access to services in every school community, including school psychologists and social workers and nurses,” Legacy said.

More support in schools would ease some of the pressure on people like Sarah Gander, a pediatrician in Saint John.

She said children and youth often end up in her office because of a lack of support at school and in the community, especially those covered by medicine.

“So they come to me and that’s the bottleneck,” she said. “And I think we’re realizing that now more than ever before, saying ‘we’ve got to do something different if we’re actually going to meet the need.'”

When she began her practice as a pediatrician, Gander said about a third of her referrals were related to mental health, neurodiversity or development. That has since increased to “well over 60 or 70 percent,” she said.

“And frankly, of the remaining 30 percent, probably 60 percent of it is mental health masquerading as stomach aches or headaches or what have you. So this isn’t just a psychiatry problem. It’s a problem for everybody.”

Gander said sometimes a referral to a pediatrician or a psychiatrist is the way to go. But she would like to see resources meet students where they are, often in schools, to capture more of these issues upstream.

With a shortage of psychologists and other health care professionals, Lamrock believes New Brunswick must deal with a training deficit but must also find other ways to support young people.

“Finding ways to empower communities so that there are caring people around who can help peers navigate, who can put kids around more trustworthy adults — the more we can do with that, the better,” he said.