Indicators of student mental health are trending in the wrong direction.
The proportion of students in grades 6 to 12 who reported experiencing symptoms of anxiety or depression has increased. In 2021-2022, 47.8% of students reported symptoms of anxiety, up from 32.6% since 2015-2016. Likewise, 41.7% of students reported symptoms of depression compared to 31.2% in 2015-2016.
Few students follow the recommendations from the 24-Hour Movement Guidelines.
Students in grades 6 to 12 continued to get insufficient amounts of sleep and physical activity, and to have too much leisure screen time. In 2021-2022, 30.2% of students reported they usually have the recommended 8 hours or more of sleep each night and 22.2% of students had the recommended amount of daily moderate or vigorous physical activity. Conversely, 85.5% of students exceeded the recommended daily limit of 2 hours of leisure screen time.
Students who identify as non-binary, Two-Spirit, and all other gender non-conforming identities, hereinafter referred to as “non-binary students”, report poorer mental and physical health outcomes than their peers.
The NBHC uses the term “non-binary” as an umbrella term to refer to individuals who self-reported their gender as neither exclusively man/ boy or woman/ girl, following Statistics Canada’s Classification of Gender. However, the NBHC acknowledges that not all individuals who were included in the non-binary category classification in its data use this term to describe their own gender identity.
In 2021-2022, non-binary students in grades 6 to 12 reported poor mental health outcomes. The percentage of non-binary students who rated their mental health as very good or excellent was 7.4%, compared to 40.2% of students who identified as boys or girls. Further, 86.0% of non-binary students reported experiencing symptoms of anxiety or depression in the 12 months prior to the survey.
This demographic group also reported poor physical health outcomes. Only 24.4% of non-binary students rated their health as very good or excellent, whereas 56.6% of those who identified as boys or girls gave the same rating. Likewise, considerably fewer non-binary students reported getting sufficient sleep (14.3% compared to 31.1%) and having the recommended amount of daily moderate or vigorous physical activity (11.9% compared to 22.7%).
Smoking, as well as alcohol and cannabis consumption, among students has decreased.
The percentage of students in grades 6 to 12 smoking daily or occasionally was reduced by half: from 13.6% in 2018-2019 to 6.2% in 2021-2022. Additionally, 17.8% of students reported drinking alcohol regularly (down from 24.0%), and 15.9% reported having used cannabis in the 12 months prior to the survey (down from 20.8%)