Suicide In Canada

The average life expectancy in Canada in 81 years. Teenagers, at fifteen, have lived approximately 19% of that expected life. It was after this 19%, Trevor Broome, a young man from Kitchener who loved hockey, his family, and making people smile, decided to take his own life. Everyone around him was shocked. How could such a popular young man be suffering? Many didn’t find out until after his death that Trevor had attempted to see multiple doctors, and seek help for his troubling thoughts. All of them doing nothing. Now, this may sound like a shocking, one-off, story, but in truth, it’s far too common. Suicide is the second most common cause of death among teenagers in Canada. 6.7 million Canadians suffer from mental illness at any given time. 6.7 million. 6.7 million Canadians face the stigma, the

I’m aware that that sounds like a lot, but to put it in perspective, the government spends up to $20 billion on our military. These are the facts. The facts are that our government is financially ignoring a problem that our society is consistently stigmatizing.

Ghandi said “No culture can live, if it attempts to be exclusive”, and this still reigns true today. The misconceptions about mental health are killing our economy and our children. The only answer is for the Canadian government to invest more money into the research and treatment of mental illness.

But why should you take my word for it? Don’t. Take Kelsey Broome, Trevor Broome’s little sister’s, word for it; who says that “[mental illness] needs to be brought out in the open”. Maybe even take the word of hundreds of studies showing a direct correlation between the amount governments invest into treating mental illness and the lowering loss of labour.

The only reasonable conclusion is that our government needs to take action, and quickly, before more of our youth, our friends, our children become just another