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“Sometimes I feel like I’m mostly alone. I learned to be independent at a young age. And I’m usually not the kind of person who goes looking for help, for that, persistence, I try to do I have always been an introverted girl, so it is often difficult for me to open up and find motivation, ”she told CNN from her home in Norway House Cree Nation, Manitoba.
“I was really confused, I didn’t know how to handle it at first. It was my last year of high school, so I was upset that I couldn’t have spent it with my friends and have the last year we all wanted, ”says Farrah.
“What really affected me was losing my grandmother a few months ago and I couldn’t attend her funeral. I was eight hours away, the roads were all blocked, my heart was heavy and guilty because I had not been able to see her in months, ”she adds.
Canada has already struggled with an epidemic among its indigenous youth. First Nations children and adolescents have a rate of depression and suicide more than 3 times higher than the average for non-Aboriginals according to government statistics
“Living on a reserve gets depressing over time. You start to feel isolated, you find yourself separating from your friends. It is very damaging to your health, ”says Farrah.
Indigenous peoples represent nearly 5% of the Canadian population and for years their unemployment rate has been almost double that of the rest of the population. For almost one in four Aboriginal youth living on reserve, the disparities in educational and recreational opportunities are significant. Housing is insufficient on many reserves, with some remote communities cut off from the rest of Canada for weeks or months during the year.
For Jennifer Simpson, the effect of the lockdown on her teenage son Coda was almost immediate.
Simpson told CNN that as a child with special needs, explaining the pandemic to Coda was not possible. All her son knew was that the daily routines that provided him with structure and security were gone. No visiting support workers, no long journeys through Norway House, no stopping to pick up slush at the local store.
“He’s had a lot of anxiety issues here at home and is trying to cope with where we’ve had to ask our doctor to change the meds. He’s been isolated at home and has issues,” Simpson said.
Increase in calls to mental health hotlines
Weeks after the community was shut down, Canadian government officials said Indigenous youth mental health helplines were inundated with calls for counselor support or emergency response. The calls came in at a rate of about four times the pre-pandemic average they say.
Samantha Folster didn’t need to hear the numbers to know a crisis was brewing. Folster is also from the Norway House Cree Nation and as a mother and grandmother she is well aware of how the vulnerability of First Nations youth can devastate a community.
But her job is now over 400 miles in Winnipeg, and as a policy analyst for the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, she hears from busy stakeholders and advisers.
“I was a little upset by the conversations, they really needed support … it was very emotional for everyone,” said Folster, describing a recent conference call in which responders and advisors described how families felt overwhelmed.
“The young people were having temper tantrums because they couldn’t understand or handle the pressure of being in quarantine,” Folster said, adding that the parents were also overwhelmed. “They had to be the behavioral specialist, the speech language pathologist, the occupational therapist, they had to do all of that.”
“The added pressure from Covid-19 caused more depression and more anxiety among our young people because the education system was not available for them either. It is their refuge for young people and it was taken away instantly. “said Folster.
For months this year, children, parents and entire communities have found themselves without the support they fought so hard to establish.
Implementing Jordan’s Principle
Jordan was born with special needs in 1999 and died five years later in hospital without ever returning home after government officials argued over who would pay for his home care.
Applied now to Covid-19, Jordan’s Principle is supposed to ensure that First Nations children receive the services they need and that those services are equal for them. A major part of this is supposed to be resources for mental health support.
And yet experts have warned for years that mental health support is inadequate, with at-risk youth still facing intergenerational trauma, substance abuse, food and housing insecurity, and domestic violence.
“There aren’t enough mental health professionals up front to deal with the real issues that Aboriginal youth have experienced,” said Dr. Anna Banerji, pediatric infectious disease specialist at the University of Toronto.
“There are some Inuit teenage friends on my Facebook feed and they all say, ‘I don’t want to live anymore,’ ‘I’m so stressed out,'” warned Banerji, whose personal story is a stark reminder of how fragile indigenous youth.
Banerji said it was heartbreaking to see the disparity in mental health support between Indigenous and non-Indigenous youth in Canada, even during a pandemic.
“It’s extremely difficult for them and then they look online and see people in other parts of Canada who ‘have’ things. It is really difficult and stressful to be an indigenous youth in a remote or isolated community, ”said Dr. Banerji.
Indigenous communities across Canada have done what one government official described as “magnificent work flattening the curve of the pandemic, with fewer than 500 positive cases nationwide.” But the mental health of Indigenous youth is still at stake.
“We see the impact this has had on the mental health of the youth in our community,” said Grand Chief Arlen Dumas of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs. “Unfortunately, we are starting to see the effects of this isolation. I’m glad we did, but it has had some pretty big and heavy impacts on our communities,” he said.
Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent by the Canadian and provincial governments with programs designed to adhere to Jordan’s Principle, to ensure that Indigenous youth do not suffer unduly during the pandemic.
But the Canadian government recognizes that it will take years to understand the effects of Covid-19 on the mental health of Indigenous youth.
“We continue to work to assess mental health needs and ensure that mental health, financial, resources are deployed directly for the growing mental health issue that we still cannot fully quantify, nor truly recognize, recognize and measure. impact. And I don’t think we will know for years what that impact was, ”said Marc Miller, Canada’s Minister of Indigenous Services.
Miller stressed that the government understands how a possible second wave of this pandemic could further damage communities and is trying to design effective programs to mitigate the fallout.
“I think the second wave would affect people more,” said Farrah who is now trying to move forward with a college education that has also been shaken by the pandemic, “We may not be able to fully mentally prepare on the spot. “
How to Get Help: In the United States, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255. The International Association for Suicide Prevention and Befrienders Worldwide can also provide contact details for crisis centers around the world.
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