Youth advocacy group calls for mental health days for Ontario students

During the first pandemic school year, students at Mary Ward Catholic High School in Scarborough took their mental well-being into their own hands.

The student body was feeling the pressure of the pandemic-mandated quadmesters, in which students had to take two courses at a time for roughly nine weeks, and an unpredictable virus that often forced them to learn from home.

To ease the pressure, the students lobbied for two schoolwide wellness days – a request granted by the school’s administration.

“At that time, I was taking the worst set of courses I could be taking: advanced functions and chemistry,” recalled Andy Feng, a Grade 12 student at the school, and a member of the Toronto Youth Cabinet. The wellness days offered him and his classmates a much-needed break, he said, where they could be off without falling behind.

Now Feng, alongside the rest of the Toronto Youth Cabinet – the official youth advisory body to the city – is calling on the province to include mental health or behavioral reasons as an excused absence for elementary and high school students under the Education Act. Currently, the act singles out “sickness or unavoidable causes,” but does not mention mental health explicitly.

The cabinet is also calling on the province to increase mental health supports at schools, offer mental health training for all school staff, and collect and report data regularly on students’ mental health, all in a bid to make talking about mental health and accessing care more mainstream.

Stephen Mensah, the executive director of the Toronto Youth Cabinet, said the calls are driven by results from a survey the cabinet conducted from December 2020 to January 2021 of Ontario students, in which 43 percent said their school does not have a mental health worker .

The survey also found 79 per cent of students struggled in some way to access support at school, and 43 per cent said it’s very important for them to get mental health support from someone who is Black, Indigenous or a person of color. The survey gathered answers from 1,042 students across Ontario, aged 12 to 19.

As of this year, 1,400 mental health professionals are working across publicly funded Ontario schools, serving a population of over two million students, according to the Ministry of Education data – a ratio that needs to improve, Mensah said.

Through further consultations with students, Mensah added he heard of a lack of understanding and fears of speaking openly about issues related to mental health. “What I’ve gathered from the survey is many students are quietly suffering… and need a trusted adult to talk to.”

Some students responded to the survey saying they would like more time to cope and understand what they’re experiencing. Others said the education system has struggled to “show empathy” for students who are burnt out.

Both the Toronto District School Board and the Toronto Catholic District School Board said they’ve conducted surveys of the student body and their families to pinpoint issues. In the TDSB’s latest survey, in November 2021, 42 per cent of elementary students and 68 per cent of high school students said they felt stressed – a stark increase from 2017 survey results.

Mensah said the calls put forward by the youth cabinet could help erode stigma and create an environment where students who are struggling can be comfortable seeking help.

“For students who do choose to take those days, we want to make sure that they are not required to provide the school with a doctor’s note,” he added. “Financial troubles and not having the luxury to be able to afford a note should not be a barrier.”

After two years of pandemic schooling, Feng said many of his classmates feel exhausted. Some miss the relief extracurricular activities gave them fromacademic pressure. Others are finding themselves losing touch with friends and classmates, especially students learning from home.

He added teachers and other school staff often do not know if a student is struggling, especially if a student is learning online, unless the student reaches out or if they notice their academic performance slipping. This is why he believes doing periodic mental health checks beyond the pandemic is important.

“Except for academics, I do not think there’s much room or many methods for a teacher to know that a student is struggling,” he said. “For students who can hide it better, their mental health issues will never show.”

The youth cabinet has met Education Minister Stephen Lecce to discuss their calls, Mensah said. In a statement, a spokesperson for Lecce said his ministry will meet parents and students in early February “to identify emerging issues in student mental health.”

“This is designed to hear directly from students on how the government can better support their recovery and access to care,” the statement said. The ministry added that student absences for mental health reasons are “considered and accepted in the same manner as other illness.”

Mensah said while there is willingness on part of the government to move, they need to do so with urgency.

“It’s not something they can wait on.”