WARNING: This article contains distressing content. If you or someone you know is struggling, please reach out to Kids Help Phone at 1-800-668-6868 or 9-8-8 for the Suicide Crisis Helpline.
NORTHERN ONTARIO — The region is grappling with a harrowing crisis, one that is devastating families and communities at an alarming rate. Newly released data shows that youth in the region are dying by suicide at four times the provincial average, yet the crisis remains largely ignored by policymakers in the south.
From 2018 to 2022, the Sudbury-Manitoulin region saw an average of 17.4 deaths by suicide per 100,000 people each year, a number that rises to 18.9 when looking at Northern Ontario as a whole. The provincial average during that time was 11.4 per 100,000. The disparity is undeniable, yet access to mental health services remains woefully inadequate.
According to Public Health Sudbury and Districts, men are significantly more likely to die by suicide than women, and the highest rate of suicide is among those aged 20 to 44. While youth suicide is especially alarming, it is part of a broader mental health emergency that continues to claim lives across generations in northern communities.
The data, compiled by journalist Patrick Cain from the Office of the Registrar General, tracks youth suicide rates between 2010 and 2022. The findings are devastating: Northern Ontario youth aged 13 to 19 are dying by suicide at a rate four times higher than their peers elsewhere in the province.
For frontline workers like Jasmine Savoie, executive director of Victim Services of Algoma, the data is both heartbreaking and unsurprising.
“You cannot hide it. You cannot deny that this is a problem,” she says. “Other regions may not be struggling as much, but here in the North, we see it firsthand.”
Despite her organization’s role in supporting families affected by tragedy, Ms. Savoie notes that data on youth suicide is not readily available.
“We have to go searching for it. And that’s a problem,” she says. “If we had clearer, more accessible data, we could start identifying the gaps in mental health resources across the North—gaps that are costing lives.”
Lack of mental health resources a key factor
One of the greatest obstacles in addressing this crisis is the chronic underfunding of mental health services in Northern Ontario. Gordon Flett, a professor at York University, explains that many young people who die by suicide feel as though they don’t matter—whether at home, in school, or in society at large.
“If you’re a youth and you take the brave step of asking for help, only to be met with waitlists, delays, or outright inaccessibility, that feeling of not mattering becomes even more profound,” he says. “It reinforces the idea that they are alone in their pain, that their suffering is insignificant in the eyes of those who are supposed to help.”
In First Nations communities, where suicide rates are disproportionately high, these barriers are even more pronounced.
“If you come from a marginalized background, the pain of not mattering is amplified,” Mr. Flett explains. “It’s deeply connected to loneliness, a lack of support, and, most tragically, a loss of hope.”
The numbers confirm what many Indigenous leaders and health advocates have been warning for years: “the North is in crisis, but help is not coming fast enough”
The broader pattern of health disparities between Northern and southern Ontario is not new. Sault Ste. Marie Mayor Matthew Shoemaker says the findings, while deeply troubling, do not shock him.
“It’s the same pattern we see with opioid deaths—the further you get from Queen’s Park, the worse the problem gets, and the less attention it receives,” he says.
“It’s either worse because of socioeconomic conditions or worse because the funding, resources, and programs simply aren’t there.”
Despite repeated calls for increased mental health funding in Northern communities, the provincial government’s response has been bureaucratic at best. In an emailed statement, Ministry of Health spokesperson Bill Campbell pointed to various funding initiatives, including: A 25 percent increase in mental health investments for children and youth; $130 million in funding since 2019 for programs such as Youth Wellness Hubs and Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Services in Thunder Bay; and the Regional Social Emergency Manager program, which supports crisis response across 11 northern Tribal Councils.
Yet for those on the ground, these figures fail to reflect the lived reality.
“We hear about these investments, but when families in crisis reach out for immediate help, where is it?” asks Mr. Savoie. “Where are the therapists? The crisis teams? The treatment centres? We cannot afford to keep losing our youth while waiting for long-term solutions that never seem to arrive.”
For the grieving families left behind these statistics are not just numbers, they are reminders of lives lost too soon—of birthdays that will never be celebrated, of dreams that will never be realized.
