Canada’s children have high rates of suicide, child abuse, infant mortality

A report released this delivers some alarming news about the Canada’s children. The report was prepared and released by Children First Canada with the O’Brien Institute for Public Health and researchers from the University of Calgary  and is based on data from numerous organizations, including Statistics Canada, the Canadian Institute for Health Information, and Health Canada.

Researchers examined the state of Canadian children’s mortality rates, physical and mental health and the social factors that affect health, such as poverty, hunger and abuse. The report reveals that suicide is the second-leading cause of death for Canadian children and youth between the ages of one and 17 according to 2012 data used in the report. In 2015, Canada was listed as one of the five countries with the highest teenage suicide rates. The reports mentions that one of three Canadians report suffering some form of child abuse before turning 16.

The number of mental health-related hospitalizations among people aged five to 24 has risen 66 per cent over the past 10 years and the number of hospitalizations has risen 55 per cent over the same period. The report points out that 10 to 20 per cent of Canadian children–or about 1.2 million–may develop a mental health disorder at some point in their lives and only about 20 per cent get the treatment they need. Canada ranked 30th out of 36 OECD-member countries with a rate of 4.7 deaths of infants under the age of one for every 1,000 live births. (By comparison, Iceland has the lowest infant mortality rate at 0.7 while India has the highest at 37.9 live births.)

The report found the number of mental health-related hospitalizations among people aged five to 24 had soared 66 per cent over the last decade, while the number of hospitalizations jumped 55 per cent over the same period.

Ontario recorded by far the highest number of mental health-related emergency room visits and hospitalizations, the report found. In 2016 alone, for instance, 16,291 children were hospitalized, more than double the number recorded in Quebec, which ranked second