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We’re collaborating with others in our sector to help build a more integrated and comprehensive mental health and addictions system for Ontario’s children, young people and families.
Why integrated care matters
Many children and young people with substance use health or addictions concerns experience concurrent mental health challenges. It’s not just that these challenges co-exist – addictions and substance use can impact mental health and vice versa, often resulting in more complex care needs. This is made even more complicated by the challenge of accessing separate services split across multiple providers, each with their own access points, triage processes and waiting lists.
Families in Ontario need high-quality programs that address mental health and substance use health and addictions together, with a focus on harm reduction and providing more options to support behavioural addictions.
| What is harm reduction? |
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Harm reduction is an approach that aims to diminish the physical, emotional, social and economic harms of addictions and problematic substance use for individuals, families and communities. It emphasizes reducing stigma to improve individual well-being and self-worth. Stigma often limits access to education and employment opportunities, housing, healthcare and other services, and contributes to poorer quality of care. Harm reduction is an evidence-based, person-first approach that recognizes that some people may not want, be ready, or be able to completely stop activities that may be harmful. |
| What are behavioural addictions? |
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Behavioural addictions are habits and activities that have become excessive or obligatory, to the point of causing functional impairments at work or school or in social relationships. These activities can include gambling, eating disorders, compulsively watching television or playing video games, sex addiction and more. Behavioural addictions don’t involve chemical intoxicants or substances. Rather, they impact a brain’s “reward system” through the body’s own biochemical processes. In other words, people with behavioural addictions are dependent on the feeling they get when they engage in particular behaviours. |
Understanding priorities, informing next steps
In 2023, after many months of consultations with agency leaders, service providers, young people and families, we released a report capturing our sector’s priorities, strengths, challenges and needs related to substance use and addictions. We found the primary concerns to be young people’s use of cannabis and problematic technology. The report informed our own next steps, including developing the other resources linked below, and is now helping to guide our sector’s shared path forward in this area.
Check out the report summary or access the full report below.
As well, we’ve funded two projects to advance integrated mental health and substance use and addictions care for young people in Ontario through our latest round of impact grants, offered in partnership with Mental Health Research Canada. Learn about our impact grants and the selected projects.
Additional resources
| Mental health impacts of screen use for children and young people during COVID-19 |
| Excessive screen time can impact physical and mental health. Many children and young people were already exceeding guidelines and recommendations for screen use before the COVID-19 pandemic, and research shows that physical distancing measures have actually increased screen time. This evidence summary compiles the latest research on the mental health impacts of screen use and highlights ways screen time can be managed to reduce negative effects. |
| Clearing the air: Informing conversations about cannabis |
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Before cannabis was legalized for non-medical use in 2018, we asked child and youth mental health and addictions service providers about their experiences and invited them to share their questions on how to address substance use. Those questions fed into the development of an evidence paper a learning resource with Addictions Mental Health Ontario in 2019. These resources examine the links between mental health and substance use, particularly cannabis use among young people under the age of 25. |