It’s been a tough year for everyone, and the Vancouver Island Crisis Society says it’s seen a jump in cases since the pandemic started.
The VICS focuses on providing voice, text and chat crisis intervention and suicide prevention services for people who need it.
The society says over the last year, it’s seen a nine per cent increase in cases.
Some of those cases included 1,613 Crisis Chat and Crisis Text interactions, where over 60 percent of the conservations were with youth under 18 years of age.
It also says over the last year it received 1,911 interventions affiliated with Mental Health Crisis Services.
Other important conversations and cases to note were the 59 contacts made with the Ministry of Children and Families where 10 percent of the call volumes were related to COVID-19 situations.
VICS says awareness and access of empathic, non-judgemental, and confidential support notably increased during the pandemic, especially as a number of community-based services became temporarily unavailable.
Next month the society is also hosting a Zoom workshop to help understand and address issues and stress in our daily lives, especially during the ongoing pandemic.
That will take place April 15th at 11:00 am.
For more information, or to see the recap of services from VICS, visit their website.
