Canadians unhappy with publicly funded mental health, substance use services, survey finds

Mental health services across the country have received “failing grades” from Canadians, according to a survey from the Canadian Alliance on Mental Illness and Mental Health (CAMIMH).

CAMIMH’s “National Report Card” survey evaluates publicly funded mental health and substance use health-care services in Canada based on four categories: access, confidence, satisfaction and effectiveness.

In the online survey of more than 3,000 Canadians, federal and provincial governments were given an ‘F’ for mental health services and a ‘D’ for substance use services.

This is CAMIMH’s second annual National Report Card survey on mental health services in Canada.

Last year, respondents gave the country a ‘D.’ However, the survey did not include questions about substance use services in Canada.

“This report card tells us that all governments are not moving nearly fast enough nor making the necessary investments to improve timely access to mental health and substance use health services,” CAMIMH co-chair Florence Budden said in a statement.

“Canadians are even more dissatisfied that our governments are woefully out of touch when it comes to meeting their mental health and substance use health needs and clearly, much more needs to be done.”

The survey found a staggering majority of Canadians (90 per cent) believe finding and getting timely mental health treatment is important and that provinces should hire more mental health care providers (83 per cent).

Three out of four Canadians (74 per cent) believe in the importance of timely access to substance use health services, while a similar proportion (72 per cent) said governments should support health-care workers with education on substance use.

“Historically, people with substance use health concerns have had no place to go except through a mental health door and then are often told they are in the wrong place,” Anthony Esposti, CEO of the Community Addictions Peer Support Association (CAPSA), which is a member of CAMIMH, said.

“This report card reveals how services for people with substance use health concerns are lacking. Canadians deserve better and CAMIMH members are committed to working with governments to improve the lives of the people in Canada.”

Canada’s spending on mental health care services is proportionally low when compared with other developed countries such as France and the U.K., CAMIMH said in a release calling for the government to increase publicly funded mental health and substance abuse supports.

The national mental health organization alliance also called for new federal legislation to treat mental and physical health care as equally important.

“Without additional sustained government funding and system innovation, a national legislative framework, enhanced public accountability and data measurement, Canadians will not see the critical changes they need to have timely access to mental health and substance use health care services,” CAMIMH co-chair Ellen Cohen said in the release. “Our governments need to do more and act faster – failure cannot be an option.”

The poll was conducted by Mental Health Research Canada and Pollara Strategic Insights with an online sample of 3,207 adult Canadians from Nov. 1 to 16, 2023. Results from a probability sample of this size could be considered accurate to within ±1.7 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. Results have been weighted based on age, gender and region to be representative of the Canadian population.