According to Health Canada, mental illness is characterized by changes in an individual’s thinking, mood, or behaviour and is usually associated with significant distress or impaired functioning in social, occupational or other activities. By all accounts, mental illnesses have a significant impact on the health of Canadians as well as the Canadian economy, including our health and social care systems.

Mental illness indirectly affects all Canadians at some time either through their own experience, or that of a family member, friend or colleague. In any given year, 1 in 5 Canadians experiences a mental illness1 and by the time Canadians reach 40 years of age, 1 in 2 have – or have had – a mental illness.2 The annual economic cost of mental illness in Canada is estimated at over $50 billion per year. This includes health care costs, lost productivity, and reductions in health-related quality of life.3 Despite a diverse and ever-evolving menu of treatment options, it is with the use of psychotropic medications that positive treatment results are hoped to be achieved for everything from psychosis to depression. Psychiatric pharmacological research and development is also following some leads of agents, such as hydroxynorketamine and psilocybin, that may hold promise. While clinical care and medication for mental illnesses has been prioritized for the preparation of this report, there are complementary therapies and alternatives to explore further, including psychotherapy, crisis lines, virtual services / telemedicine, community supports, alternative medicine, prevention and promotion interventions, and workplace benefits and support.

Our focus at IQVIA is to help optimize health by bringing data and fact-based insights forward to better inform decision makers in this critical area, with the utmost respect of privacy and data security. The statistics and analysis featured in this report were sourced from the IQVIA Health Insights Dashboard, part of a collaboration with the IQVIA Advisory Board for Advancement in Health, a group of thought leaders from Quebec and Ontario from from various healthcare sectors: patients, health professionals, researchers, health system managers and health data specialists. A true public utility analysis tool, based on fully de-identified data, the dashboard is used to analyze drug use in selected therapeutic areas and is designed to answer three basic questions: how many prescriptions, for how many users, and by which medical specialties of prescribers. See page 6 for limitations to using IQVIA data.

This report provides a timely view of trends in drug treatments for mental health disorders, dispensed in community pharmacies in Canada over a three-year period (2019 and pandemic years of 2020 and 2021), and how those vary by province. There are four sub-categories included in our definition of the therapeutic class of drug treatments for mental health. Detailed data insights for each of these categories will be featured in separate IQVIA publications.