Improving Child Mental Health Policy in Canada

Evergreen is Canada's first official national mental health framework for children that was developed by the Mental Health Commission of Canada in 2010. The program is primarily an online consultation service, which is a beneficial aspect since it provides widespread access for those seeking mental health services for children, especially those in rural and underserved areas. Despite the program's benefits and high ratings, Canada still lacks an adequate mental health framework for children because not all provinces and territories fulfilled the World Health Organization (WHO) criteria for child mental health, which shows that Evergreen has not been effective. As summarized in this review article, out of the 13 provinces and territories, the four provinces that met the minimum criteria for the WHO guidelines for child mental health policies were Ontario (ON), Alberta (AB), Saskatchewan (SK), and British Columbia (BC), with British Columbia being the leader in child mental health policies in Canada. For those that met the guideline, many performed poorly or failed to meet some of the WHO evaluation criteria for child mental health policies. For future progress, Canada should assess and evaluate its child mental health policies and incorporate that into a new and improved national standard and framework. Mental health data from Canada should also be analyzed to either implement an improved system or to fix old systems such as Evergreen that are currently in place. Finally, child mental health policy for Canada should constantly be reevaluated and improved to compensate for changes over time.