The Thinning Psychologist Workforce in Canada

"In a nationally representative sample, half of all Canadians who sought mental health care encountered significant challenges (Williams et al., 2024). A third struggled to find help for common conditions like posttraumatic stress disorder and depression. When we dig deeper, the data is even more chilling: For specific conditions like ADHD, OCD, and substance use disorders, finding treatment becomes harder still. Most disturbingly, these barriers are not experienced equally. Indigenous and Black Canadians face significantly greater difficulty accessing care across a range of conditions."

"This is a crisis of supply. We do not have enough practitioners. For years, the primary pipeline for new psychologists has been the doctoral (PhD) route, a process that takes an average of 7.5 years to complete. Despite population growth and soaring rates of mental illness, the number of doctoral graduates has remained flat, resulting in a net loss of psychologists annually."

Canada faces a severe mental health crisis driven by an insufficient number of qualified psychologists and structural barriers to care. Half of Canadians seeking mental health services encountered significant challenges, and a third struggled to get help for common disorders; conditions such as ADHD, OCD, and substance use disorders are especially difficult to treat. Indigenous and Black Canadians experience disproportionately greater access barriers. The dominant doctoral (PhD) training pathway averages 7.5 years, yields flat graduate numbers, and fails to improve workforce diversity. Faster, MA-level training pathways, such as Ontario's reforms, can expand capacity and serve as a scalable blueprint.

Read at Psychology Today