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Cindy Negrello, executive leader of community and clinical mental health at the Canadian Mental Health Association, said parents are very worried about their kids and the scramble to balance their job with their child’s online or in-person education.

“There are all these intricate mechanisms that are causing the extra, undue stress for people,” said Negrello. “People are grieving these everyday things that are coming at us, they’re grieving their losses both big and small.”

Looking more broadly, Dobson said the results of three national surveys done in recent weeks, each examining how the country’s mental health is faring, confirm the same pattern.

“Rates of anxiety continue to be high but we’re seeing that rates of depression have gone up and, generally speaking, these surveys suggest the rates are about double what they normally would be before COVID-19,” said Dobson.

Some of the main reasons for this kind of spike in anxiety and depression are the unpredictability, uncontrollability and salience of the pandemic, Dobson explained.

“Anxiety tends to be a future-oriented emotion, we worry about things that haven’t yet happened but might occur, whereas depression tends to be a past-oriented emotion. We get depressed about things we think we’ve lost or things we have lost, like lost opportunity, employment or death of loved ones,” said Dobson.

In the early days of the pandemic, reports of anxiety spiked but as the pandemic wears on rates of depression have continued to climb.