More Images
As Canada reviews the lessons of the global COVID-19 pandemic, one thing has become abundantly clear: It's time to bolster efforts to address the country's mental health crisis. Canada is not alone in this predicament. More than 2 years ago, the World Health Organization reported a 25 percent pandemic-related increase in the prevalence of anxiety and depression across the globe.

For Canadian youth (i.e., children and adolescents) and young adults, these increases were simply the tip of the iceberg; findings from two related studies published this month in JAMA Network Open and JAMA Pediatrics highlighted increased rates of hospitalizations for anxiety, personality disorders, and suicide and self-harm. According to these data, hospitalizations were also especially high for eating disorders in girls aged 12-17 years, who accounted for more than three in four admissions across the country between April 2020 and March 2023.

Nadia Roumeliotis, MD, PhD, a pediatric critical care physician at CHU Sainte-Justine in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and lead author of both studies, told Medscape Medical News that "females seem to have fared worse over the course of the pandemic regarding anxiety disorders, suicide and self-harm, personality disorders, and eating disorders. It's interesting because there's something in the sex-based differences in how male and female adolescents have lived through it." Head over to Medscape to read the full story.