Appendix V

Atlantic Mental Health Profile Summarized from the Tides of Change⁹⁵

There is a distinct split in mental health status among the four Atlantic provinces, with Newfoundland and Labrador and Prince Edward Island having higher levels of mental health than the Canadian average, and Nova Scotia and New Brunswick having lower levels.

Newfoundland and Labrador and Prince Edward Island report high levels of mental well-being and low levels of chronic stress. In 2001, high stress was 40% less common among residents of Newfoundland and Labrador than among other Canadians. In Prince Edward Island, chronic stress levels were 23% lower than the national average.

Residents of Newfoundland and Labrador are 30% more likely than other Canadians to report high levels of psychological well-being. Prince Edward Island has a rate of psychological well-being 17% higher than the national rate. In contrast, both Nova Scotia and New Brunswick have lower levels of psychological well-being than other Canadians.

Across Canada, 7.1% of the population is considered to be likely to become depressed. This rate of risk for depression is lower in Newfoundland and Labrador (4.7%) and in Prince Edward Island (5.8%). The rate is higher in both Nova Scotia (8.7%) and New Brunswick (7.7%). The regions with the highest risk of depression in Atlantic Canada are in Nova Scotia - Colchester, Cumberland, and East Hants counties (11.6%) and Cape Breton (9.8%) - and in the Moncton region of New Brunswick (10.7%).

Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia all have suicide rates lower than the Canadian average of 12.9 per 100,000 people, but these rates conceal some differences within provinces. Newfoundland and Labrador's low provincial average of 7.3 per 100,000 conceals a very high rate of suicide in Labrador (19.2 per 100,000) where Aboriginal peoples make up 28.7% of the population. Prince Edward Island's suicide rate of 11.0 per 100,000 hides an urban-rural split: the rate is higher in urban Charlottetown and Summerside (14.1) than in the rural areas of the province (8.3). At 11.6 per 100,000, Nova Scotia's suicide rate is also lower than the national average.

New Brunswick 's suicide rate of 13.4 per 100,000 is higher than the national average, and it, too, masks an urban-rural difference. However, in New Brunswick, in contrast to Prince Edward Island, the rates are higher in rural areas than in urban: Saint John (9.2), Fredericton (10.6), and Moncton (12.3) are all below the national average, while the Edmundston area in the western part of the province (24.9) and the Campbellton area in northern New Brunswick (22.8) have the highest rates of suicide in the Atlantic region.

 

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