Ontario youth report lower psychological distress but still high, new survey shows

The 2025 Ontario Student Drug Use and Health Survey, conducted by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, shows that 46% of students in Grades 7 to 12 experienced moderate to serious psychological distress, a drop from 51% in the 2023 survey but still considerably higher than figures from more than ten years ago. Lead researcher Hayley Hamilton described the decline as encouraging but stressed that the overall level of distress remains elevated, possibly due to social media influence and greater willingness to report mental-health issues.

She also pointed to expanded mental-health resources in schools, which have led to more students seeking help. The survey noted a continued decrease in alcohol and drug use and a later onset of first use, yet it uncovered a dramatic rise in online gambling, with one in ten students placing sports bets in 2025 compared with one in one hundred in 2017. Almost a quarter of respondents reported daily exposure to online gambling advertising.

The study sampled 11,108 students across 246 schools in 42 Ontario school boards between December 2024 and June 2025. The Canadian Research Insights Council cautioned that the online methodology does not allow a traditional margin of error.