Attending to Mis/matches in Care: a Narrative Inquiry in the Experiences of Youth and Families Waiting to Access Mental Health Services during COVID-19 in Canada

The mental health of young people has increasingly become the focus of child and youth studies. In Canada, the critical need for improved youth mental health services (MHS) has been exacerbated and exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. This is particularly evident for BIPOC and 2SLGBTQ + youth. In this paper, we foreground the experiences of young people and their families attempting to access support from child and youth MHS during the COVID-19 pandemic. Employing narrative inquiry, we engaged in research conversations with ten youth participants and their families over an 18-month period. We attended to the experiences of children, youth, and families placed on waiting lists for formalized mental health support. Through a process of analysis of their narrative accounts, we identified several resonant threads that impacted young people’s mental health in relation to their experiences of waiting, systemic challenges, gaps and barriers within child and youth MHS in Canada. Youth and family members described various mis/matches between the MHS needed and those offered, or which were accessible. Our findings highlight participants’ mental health experiences waiting for support and the impact such waiting had on their identities. Young people shared their use of innovative coping resources, strategies, and services they accessed while waiting for formalized mental health supports. Participants’ experiences of mis/matched care foreground the ways in which access to appropriate, empathetic, and timely support is limited. We outline possibilities moving forward which shift focus from a constricted view of children and youth mental health as problems to be solved, towards young people’s understanding of themselves as agentic beings.