Around 1 in 10 Canadians reported accessing to mental health and substance use supports in the last year.
ABOUT THE REPORT
The report presents data from MHRC's partnership with Pollara Strategic Insights during our national mental health polling initiative. These findings represent 894 Canadians who reported accessing mental health or substance use supports in the last year, and answered questions about their experiences in an online blind poll between July 2022 and April 2023.
With input from Canadians with lived experience, we explore how Canadians feel about the mental health supports they received between July 2021 and April 2023.
MHRC’s quarterly tracking has demonstrated that trends in access to mental health supports, satisfaction with care and perception of services to meet needs have remained stable throughout the recovery period of the pandemic.
By broadly grouping how mental health supports are funded (publicly, privately, or through the community), our deep dive into the data reveals how these various pathways are meeting the needs of Canadians.
Key findings:
Overall, Canadians who accessed community mental health supports were less likely to be satisfied with the services they received, compared to publicly or privately funded care.
These Canadians were also less likely to say these community mental health supports met all or most of their mental health needs
No significant differences in satisfaction or perceived met need were found between publicly and privately funded mental health and substance use supports
Small, but potentially meaningful differences exist between sexes.
A collection of our previously released research briefs providing an in-depth investigation of our polling results can be found here.