I work as a youth and family counsellor at Central Toronto Youth Services, and my colleagues and I have started to notice a trend: The most common root cause of the struggles faced by the kids referred to us is their parents’ unresolved trauma – abuse, neglect, domestic violence, sexual violence, tragic accidents, or trauma related to systemic discrimination and prejudice. Unfortunately, I’ve learned that the mental health care system in Toronto does not have the resources to provide these parents with the help that they need. That’s not fair to them, or to their kids.

Trauma is hugely damaging to the mental health of those who survive it. Chronic anxiety and depression, flashbacks, addictions, and suicide are all common in post-traumatic stress. Left unmanaged, the effects of trauma often spread beyond the survivors themselves to their children.

These kids typically receive mental health diagnoses of their own. As adults, they frequently end up with the same diagnoses as their parents. They’re also more likely to become involved in the justice system. One need look no further than aboriginal communities to see how trauma can start an intergenerational cycle of mental health and addictions crises.

Children need their parents to be emotionally healthy in order to be emotionally healthy themselves. That being the case, my colleagues and I are limited in what we can do for the children and families that we see if parents can’t access quality trauma counselling. Few resources exist in Toronto, and those that do are full.

I recently put in a call to the Trauma Therapy Program at Women’s College Hospital in the hopes of making a referral for a mom. An automated message told me that the program is so overwhelmed with referrals that they no longer even have a waiting list.

Despite the high demand, the Women’s Health Centre at St. Joseph’s Health Centre, which did almost exclusively trauma-focused counselling work, was closed in 2012. Some of its services were moved to a nearby community health centre, but the capacity of the program was significantly reduced. Some community agencies offer trauma counselling, but not enough to meet demand.

Despite our expanding knowledge of trauma as a major root cause of mental health and addictions problems for both adults and their children, this massive gap in resources is not being addressed by the provincial government. In fact, trauma receives only cursory mention in the current provincial mental health and addictions strategy document, “Open Minds, Healthy Minds” and no mention at all in the children’s mental health strategy document, “Moving On Mental Health.” These documents are supposed to be guiding the transformation of our system into one that is “comprehensive.” How can they do that without addressing such a fundamental issue?

Mental health and social services systems should always be working hard to try to put themselves out of business. That is, they should be devoted to reducing to an absolute minimum the number of people who require their services in the first place.

Moving beyond a system focused on managing symptoms to one that addresses root causes, such as trauma, is the only way to do that. Until it’s done, the families that I work with will continue to struggle for generations to come.

Peter Trainor is a clinical social worker and a former CIHR Fellow in Public Health Policy at the University of Toronto. @pwtrainor