More than one in 10 Canadians aged 15 and over said they always or often felt lonely when asked in the Canadian Social Survey between August and September.
Survey According to Statistics Canada, women, young people and those who are not in a relationship expressed greater degrees of loneliness.
About half of lonely Canadians reported fair or poor mental health.
The survey indicated that, given the context of the global pandemic, understanding loneliness and its impacts on quality of life is a priority.
Hard Feelings Mental Health founder Kate Scowen tells CityNews that there was a mental health crisis in the country prior to the pandemic. Lack of access to support is the reason why he founded the social enterprise.
Hard Feelings is a Toronto-based non-profit organization that aims to support mental health counselors who provide low-cost services to clients.
Scowen says the pandemic is a possible indicator of why younger people and women feel more alone.
“For teens and young adults, it’s a very social time in your life where you are shaping your identity and your place in the world, and not having your social groups to develop that can be complicated and create loneliness,” she says. .
The survey found that younger women appeared to be particularly affected by loneliness. Almost twice the number of women ages 15-24 who reported feeling lonely consistently or frequently compared to women in the next decade of their lives.
Among men, the differences in loneliness were less dramatic by age group, with 18% of men aged 15-24 and 15% of men 25-34 saying they always or frequently felt lonely .
“Online dating has been a great challenge for people. Clients were really struggling with being ‘ghosts’ in online dating and the impact it has on self-esteem and sense of self. I think those experiences stand out during the pandemic. “
Nearly a quarter of people who lived alone reported that they always or frequently felt lonely, more than double the proportion of those who lived with other people in their household, a statistic StatCan found not surprising.
Those who said they always or frequently feel lonely were three times higher among those who were not married or in a common-law relationship, compared with those who were married or living in common law, a disparity that continued when examined between men and women separately. .
Of those in a marriage or de facto relationship, more women than men reported that they always, or often felt lonely.
Loneliness is included as an indicator in the recently established National Quality of Life Framework, which will identify future policy priorities at the federal level.
Scowen says that while there is some mental health coverage through the province’s health insurance plan, more needs to be done to make mental health services accessible.
“Right now, the only mental health services covered by OHIP are through a covered psychiatrist as a physician,” she says.
“Expanding that coverage to social workers, psychotherapists, psychologists to allow more access for people, I think it would be really important, and a change that people have been asking for for quite some time.”
The survey found that the prevalence of loneliness among the country’s largest groups designated as visible minorities was in line with the general population.
For example, 13% of South Asians and 11% of Blacks reported that they always or frequently felt lonely. These results were not statistically different from the general estimate that 13 percent of Canadians experience high levels of loneliness.
Scowen says there is systemic racism and homophobia that some people face when trying to access healthcare support, such as assumptions and stereotypes, that create barriers to getting help.
“That’s really a big part: being informed about the trauma at your job and understanding the trauma of racism, the trauma of homophobia,” she says.
“Organizations, especially in a city like Toronto, are working hard to do better, but we have a long way to go.”
The survey did not provide more detailed demographic data on the people of BIPOC or the LGBTQ + community.
Scowen believes loneliness will continue and points to the UK, where the British government introduced a Loneliness Minister.
Loneliness is different from social isolation. We can be in a group with many people and still feel alone. It’s more like a disconnect between the type of relationships that we are in and the type of relationships that we want to be in, ”he says.
“It is a real struggle to move through life without feeling deeply connected to anyone else. As human beings, we want that kind of connection. “
Reference-toronto.citynews.ca