Alberta’s mishandling of COVID-19 may be impacting the mental health of people in the province directly, as new data shows Albertans are reporting higher anxiety than any other province, surpassing Ontario for the first time since the pandemic began.
The data comes from the latest poll out of Mental Health Research Canada, which began surveying Canadians on their mental health at the beginning of the pandemic. In their eighth poll, conducted between Aug. 17 and 21, MHRC found that 31 per cent of Albertans are feeling high levels of anxiety.
The rate comes close to the highest levels of anxiety recorded by Ontarians in April — around 33 per cent — which coincided with heavy criticism of the Doug Ford government at the time as Ontario endured some of the longest lockdown measures in the country. Anxiety among Ontarians has since decreased to 26 per cent as of August.
In Alberta, however, a different story is emerging: the abrupt easing of restrictions in July, marked by Premier Jason Kenney’s “Open for Summer” announcement and coupled with the move to treat COVID-19 as an endemic and reduce testing capacity, has been followed by higher rates of anxiety among Albertans. For researchers, this marks the first time during the pandemic that people’s mental health was not affected by lockdown restrictions, but rather the lifting of them and a rise in COVID-19 cases.
The data is “perplexing” given previous findings out of Ontario, said Michael Cooper, vice-president of development at MHRC, but it suggests Albertans are feeling increasingly worried about the abrupt easing of restrictions, a move that was heavily criticized by some public health officials including Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief medical officer of health.
“There’s this cognitive dissonance going on where you know that case counts are going up, you know there’s an increasing threat, but no one has stepped forward to say, ‘This is how we’re going to deal with it,’” Cooper said, adding the vacuum in leadership has led some Albertans to feel more anxious.
As case counts in Alberta climbed after the dropping of pandemic restrictions, Kenney and then-health minister Tyler Shandro were criticized repeatedly for failing to deliver regular COVID-19 updates, forcing a group of Alberta doctors to provide their own briefing to the public in absence of the government. On Tuesday, Shandro was shuffled elsewhere in cabinet and replaced by Jason Copping as health minister.
“You just can’t flip the switch and say ‘OK, everything’s back to normal,’” said Lisa Strohschein, a sociology professor at the University of Alberta. “It happened so rapidly here that people didn’t have time to grasp it, and it didn’t fit with the way they learned to behave over the last 15 months.”
Strohschein added many Albertans were looking at other jurisdictions at the time and noticing stark differences between how the pandemic has been handled elsewhere versus in Alberta. And with the absence of pandemic restrictions, people had to exert more mental energy to set barriers for themselves in order to feel safe, while worrying about the behaviour of others around them.
“Now everybody had to figure it out for themselves,” Strohschein said.
The professor noticed the contrast personally on a visit to Ontario shortly after pandemic restrictions were eased in Alberta. “When we arrived in Ontario, we felt immediately safe,” Strohschein said, adding the protocols around distancing and masking helped her feel at ease. When she returned to Alberta in late August, the mood was different.
“It felt like there were no rules anymore, like no one was at the helm,” she said.
After mounting criticism and rising case counts that have crippled Alberta’s health-care system, leading to the cancellation of elective surgeries across the province, Kenney reintroduced restrictions and implemented a vaccine mandate, albeit “reluctantly,” he said during a Sept. 15 announcement.
For Strohschein and others, the reimplementation of restriction was met with a sigh of relief, but new challenges have sprung up. The professor is now left scrambling to restructure her lesson plans, she said, after planning for an in-person semester that had been abruptly moved online due to the newly announced measures.
But, she is hopeful better days are ahead.
“We’ll still have worries about what to do, but there is now a mandatory mask requirement everywhere,” she said. “That will help people feel more safe, even if it’s not immediately.”
Nadine Yousif is a Toronto-based reporter for the Star covering mental health. Follow her on Twitter: @nadineyousif_
