The New Brunswick Health Council recently looked at youth mental health.
They surveyed over 63, 000 New Brunswick students in grades four through 12.
“These are the results from the last school year, for 2023/2024. We’ve chosen to highlight our results around the mental health with our kids because we’re seeing a slight improvement on the other side of the pandemic,” says CEO Stephane Robichaud.
But he says despite the slight improvements, there are still areas that require focus.
“If we were to look at some of these elements more closely, for example, high school connectedness is relatively high, but then when you look at community belonging is much lower. Only about one out of five students feel a strong sense of connectedness to their community. One in four feel lonely most or all of the time. One in two are victims of bullying at school and about two out of three feel that they have difficulty sleeping most or all of the time,” Robichaud adds.
He says awareness is needed around the issue of sleep because many kids are not getting at least eight hours a night.
“I think a lot of people underestimate the negative impact that a lack of sleep can have on a kid’s development. So that’s an important one. We’re still learning how to manage new technology. So screen time is one thing. The impact of social media is having on our kids is something that we need to be aware of. It’s all about learning how to help our kids manage these better, manage these new technologies.”
There were communities in the province that showed results better than the provincial average.
“The communities of Dieppe and Memramcook. They are doing better with connectedness to the community, there’s lower bullying and they don’t tend to feel lonely most of the time. So they’re doing better on those risk factors in those communities,” Robichaud says.
Surveys for this year will be out soon and Robichaud is encouraging all students and parents to participate.
