Local psychology professor advocating for increase in mental health services

Western professor calls for mental health supports As more people suffer from severe depression, a researcher is calling for additional mental health services. Marek Sutherland reports.

A quarter of all people in their lifetime will experience a major depressive episode. That is an increase over previous studies, and the reasons for that are unclear.

"Anytime a disorder goes up in prevalence, you've got to wonder, is it that people are more aware of it, or is better screening, or [are] doctors are asking [better questions], or something like that?" said Dr. Elizabeth Hayden, a professor of psychology at Western University.

She said she worked on a study that used data to look at depressive and anxious symptoms in London, Ont.-area families during the COVID19 pandemic, and particularly during the lockdown.

"One thing we were able to look at was associations between depressive and anxious symptoms in children and their mothers in the home at the same time during the lockdown," she said.

Dr. Hayden said recent studies suggest more people than not will meet criteria for some kind of psychiatric disorder at some point in their life.

“The big problem from where I see it is that greater sort of tolerance or desire to destigmatize mental health problems has not, unfortunately, been matched with an analogous move toward getting people evidence-based, empirically supported mental health treatment,” said Dr. Hayden.

Dr. Hayden believes universities aided by the government need to develop new programs to meet the demand that is increasing in mental health care.

Dr. Hayden said, “I can see lots of potential for [the government to] increase shorter degree programs. By shorter, I mean degree programs that don't take people seven or eight years to finish. You know, sort of Master's level or even graduate diploma-based programs in empirically supported treatments.”

The need is growing and action is going to be needed to fill an increasing gap in mental health treatments.