Stress complicates Indigenous health

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 22/06/2020 (1962 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For Dr. Evan Adams, the chief medical officer of British Columbia’s First Nations Health Authority, the COVID-19 virus isn’t the primary issue facing Indigenous peoples.

“In the past three months in Indigenous communities,” Adams explains, “more people have died from overdoses than the COVID-19 virus because of the mental effects of the pandemic.”

Adams, a member of the Tla’amin First Nation, was a part of a conference on the effect of COVID-19 on Indigenous communities. It was hosted by a coalition of researchers and political leaders working with the Association of Canadian Studies. It has been publishing weekly research on the pandemic since March. On June 16, the association partnered with research firm Leger to poll more 1,500 Canadians about their mental health since the pandemic started.

Researchers found that nearly one in five people in Manitoba and Saskatchewan said their mental health is worse due to the pandemic.

The poll also found that 35 per cent of those in Manitoba and Saskatchewan feel “stressed” and “worried” when they are out in public (compared with 50 per cent of Canadians) and 38 per cent are “personally afraid of contracting COVID-19.” Nationally, the figure is at 52 per cent.

Perhaps the most telling statistic is that 40 per cent of people polled in Manitoba and Saskatchewan fear “the worst is yet to come” — the highest in the country — and 37 per cent believe “life will never return to normal.”

Meanwhile, 51 per cent of Canadians think the worst is “now” or “behind us.”

So, while the worst of this wave of COVID-19 is behind us, anxiety is the new pandemic.

Everyone has undoubtedly experienced stress during the last few months but — like every other consequence of COVID-19 — Indigenous peoples experience deeper and more lasting effects.

Suicide and substance abuse in Indigenous communities are well-documented, but their relationships to the lack of mental health services and the ongoing effects of residential schools, the Indian Act, and a culture that demeans Indigenous peoples is less known. All contribute to higher rates of depression, trauma and abuse than anywhere in Canada.

Experts from the Association of Canadian Studies are calling the impact of COVID-19 a “syndemic” on Indigenous communities. That’s when a vulnerable population is faced with a sickness that threatens their health (such as a pandemic) and the two intersect to devastate that community.

A syndemic emerged, for example, when the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic killed thousands of soldiers fighting on the battlefield in the First World War.

So, like then, Indigenous communities are fighting a war over mental health.

I spent this past week interviewing Indigenous peoples on the front lines of this battle.

One community member said she was scared to come south to Winnipeg even though there was no fresh food in her community.

Another said his Indigenous seniors residence ended virtually all services and supports and reduced staff when the pandemic started, leading to residents experiencing harassment and “hiding in their rooms.”

An Indigenous youth said she has no summer job prospects and will have to couch-surf because she doesn’t want to stay in a shelter or return to her abusive relationship.

One residential school survivor said she felt re-traumatized because her movement was restricted, she was cut off from her friends and family, and “I was constantly under threat, just like having the priest nearby.”

The result, almost unilaterally among everyone I spoke to, was an urge to escape. Some told me they thought about drinking or using drugs (some for the first time in decades). A few did. All felt shame, depression and hopelessness.

Over the past three months I’ve written a half-dozen of columns about the rise in poverty, conflicts with the police, and needle use during the pandemic in Indigenous communities in downtown Winnipeg — but now maybe you can understand why.

Stress, of course, isn’t only being felt by Indigenous peoples but, due to past and present trauma and racism, we do experience it worse.

To address this, the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs has partnered with the First Peoples Wellness Circle in northwestern Ontario to help people cope, by producing leaflets on the importance of family and culture.

Manitoba Health has a service for Indigenous clients called First Nations and Inuit Hope For Wellness which offers phone counselling in Cree, Ojibwa and Inuktitut.

Some First Nations have instituted their own crisis services, including Opaskwayak Cree Nation near The Pas.

This week, online talks have been offered on mental health in Ride Don’t Hide and Spirit Week Manitoba, sponsored by the Canadian Mental Health Association. There are special talks by Indigenous poets such as Katherena Vermette and Duncan Mercredi. I am speaking at 8 p.m. Saturday.

The pandemic curve may be flat, but the syndemic curve is just beginning.

niigaan.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca