I work on a mental health support line, and I'll quite confidently say that the pandemic and it's lockdowns definitely took a huge mental health toll. We actually expanded our hours from 4-8 hours/day and added a new 1-800 line for cross Canada callers and it's busy.

I hear from so many people, especially seniors who are struggling with social isolation and loneliness and a lot of the seniors centres/programs that they might have gone to pre-pandemic have out right closed or reduced services.

And mental health resources are really hard to access and either have huge wait lists or are massively expensive. Mental health resources for youth are especially lacking. At my mental health hospital alone wait times have tripled from pre-pandemic waits.

I just feel very lucky that I have established mental health care that is stable and good.

I tend to be pretty open on social media about my mental health and addiction history, but they're pre-requisites for my job so it's safe, and as a result I get a lot of people asking me about resources.

We also have what's called Bell's "Let's talk day." which is a fundraiser by Canada's largest telecom where they donate the proceeds of that day's billings to mental health charities and they promote talking about mental health. It's actually done a lot to raise awareness