Abi was outgoing and gifted. He never made it to graduation. The 17-year-old’s death — and what followed at his Brampton high school — is part of a concerning problem

WARNING: This story contains sensitive subject matter, including suicide and self-harm, that could be triggering for some readers.

For more than a year, a diploma, graduation gown and cap sat inside the home of school principal Rasulan Hoppie.

He wasn't able to hand the items to former student Abivarman Abi" Arulpirarangah on the day in the spring of 2019 when the bright, charismatic Grade 12 athlete was supposed to cross the stage with his classmates at Castlebrooke Secondary School in Brampton.

Two months earlier, Arulpirarangah died by suicide.

His death triggered a ripple effect of suicidal ideation among students at Castlebrooke, uncovering a mental health problem deeper than Hoppie could have imagined.

The school was reeling," Hoppie recalls of the days following the suicide, when the school's hallways filled with vacant" eyes. I literally had to be on the ground, holding [students] as they were shaking and convulsing."

At least five students were triggered to the point of requiring medical intervention and, in three cases, hospitalization, he said. Dozens more withdrew from their studies and activities in a state of sometimes speechless grief, he said.

In those aftershocks, Hoppie said he witnessed the depth of unmet mental health needs among growing numbers of young people.

Our current structure is woefully inadequate to meet the ever increasing social needs - mental health needs - of our students," he said.

The incident is part of what researchers, parents and educators across the country have identified as a broken model for mental health care in Canada that is failing to diagnose and treat youth at a crucial moment in their development.

Across Canada, youth mental illness has never been more widespread, resources have never been so strained and as students increasingly spiral into crisis in their post-secondary years, experts are eyeing primary and secondary school as the critical times to intervene.

Mounting evidence shows children across the continent are experiencing increasing levels of suicidal ideation, self-harm, depression and anxiety without early assessment and treatment, the ongoing Generation Distress investigation by the Toronto Star and Investigative Journalism Bureau has found.

In 152 in-depth interviews conducted by this investigation with North American college and university students self-identifying as facing mental health challenges, roughly 70 per cent reported experiencing serious mental illness symptoms prior to their post-secondary years. Yet approximately 40 per cent of those said they hadn't received treatment before university or college.

The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) estimates that three in four Canadian children and youth with mental illness do not have access to specialized treatment.

Across Canada, child and youth hospitalizations for mental disorders have risen 64 per cent in the past decade, according to the latest data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information.

Researchers have linked early detection of learning disabilities, anxiety and depression with fewer emergency department visits.

And a 2019 study published in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry concluded it isn't clear that Ontario's healthcare system has been able to meet the demands of a 135-per-cent spike in the rate of emergency department visits for self-harm among teens between 2009 and 2017.

There is an urgent need for strategies to connect adolescents who visit the [emergency department] with appropriate treatments and services," the study reads.

A lot of kids experience distress about interactions or academic challenges that happen in school," said Dr. Daphne Korczak, a child psychiatrist and researcher at SickKids Hospital in Toronto. Being able to identify these and having the flexibility to address them within our educational systems would be very important...Funding prevention efforts should be a priority."

Schools are trying to meet the rising demand for help.

The Toronto District School Board increased its mental health spending by 26 per cent between 2014/15 and 2019/20, to $16.3 million, according to data obtained by this investigation.

In Calgary, where the board of education's mental health budget has grown to just under $11 million, there has been a 27 per cent rise in the number of students seeking counselling in recent years.

In Yellowknife, the number of student counselling appointments has risen nearly 70 per cent, and in Nunavut's Qikiqtani school district, they are up 115 per cent.

***

As news of Arulpirarangah's death spread down the school's hallways, one student stood out to Hoppie.

Seized by a feeling that something was deeply wrong, he invited her into his office to talk.

[She] revealed to me: I was just so despondent, and I'm glad that you reached out to me, Mr. Hoppie, because I was on my way to go commit suicide myself,'" he recalled.

Now working for the Peel District School Board's central administration, Hoppie said it's time for educators and governments to stop arguing that we can't afford to provide better mental health care for our young people.

We can't afford not to," he said. We have enough evidence to show that by not addressing mental health concerns in the early stages as they develop, [it] causes greater draws on our system longer term."

Baruch Zohar, who has been teaching high school students in Toronto for three decades, said the classroom environment has transformed in recent years.

Mental health has gone from something we barely thought about to the number one problem in schools," Zohar said. I have never seen [students] as unhappy and anxious as in the last few years...Each year I lose a significant number of student days to mental health-related absences. More and more students are also going away for weeks or months of intensive treatment."

Arulpirarangah was described in memorial posts on social media as outgoing and independent, intellectually gifted and active in rugby and basketball.

The youngest of three children born to South-Asian, first-generation Canadian parents, the 17-year-old excelled in robotics and aspired to study engineering at the University of Waterloo or McMaster University.

Throughout his young life, his family had no serious concerns about his mental health.

He was the type of kid you don't really think about when you think about depression," said his sister Apinayah. He was that type of kid that you can go to if you have a problem."

His cousin, Thanya Arulpirarangah, said Abivarman was often selfless to a fault.

It's unfortunate that he wasn't able to help himself."

Thanya and Apinayah both recall him starting to isolate from friends and family in the weeks prior to his death. Days before he died, Arulpirarangah received a rejection letter from one of his preferred universities, said Thanya. But nothing was said about his mental health.

On the evening he died, he asked both his parents to pick his sister up from her job, an unusual request given only one of them usually left the house to get her.

Returning home around 7 p.m., Arulpirarangah's father discovered his son's body.

I've never heard my dad yell like that," Apinayah recalls.

In the days following, the family learned more of Arulpirarangah's plan. He left a note on his Instagram profile that remains. It reads: It always has been a fake smile." In his bedroom, they found religious texts, bookmarked for sections that spoke about death.

It wasn't just something he thought of overnight. It was sort of something he was constantly thinking about," said Thanya.

What remains for the family are feelings of deep guilt.

If I'm having a busy day and he comes into my mind, I try to push it away," said Apinayah. (I) want to cry because I could have done better, I could have been a better sister...Even after a year and a half, it's still the same type of emotions and pain."

**

Among 35 countries in the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development), Canada ranks fifth-highest for youth suicide rates.

Suicide is the second-leading cause of death for Canadians aged 15-24 behind accidents, as well as second-leading cause of death for girls aged 10-14 behind cancer, according to Statistics Canada.

The system in place to protect our young people from their demons often kicks in only after they fall into life-threatening crises.

On the evening of March 22, 2015, Coryn Urquhart, then 17, opened her journal and wrote what she thought would be her last entry.

It reads, in part: If someone reads this - if I die - look. This is all you need to understand. I have loved. I have lived. It sucked. I'm done with that now."

That night, she attempted to take her own life.

The next day, Urquhart told a teacher what happened, triggering a flurry of activity" over her mental health.

But the high school she was attending in Hamilton did not have the kind of help she needed, she said. She recalls guidance counsellors being there purely for academic help, and the school's chaplain seeming difficult to approach for non-Catholic and LGBTQ+ students.

There was pretty much nothing," said Urquhart, one of the 152 North American post-secondary students interviewed for this investigation.

Urquhart's first suicidal thought came at age 12. At age 14, she began self-harming, which continued for more than four years, she said.

I wanted somebody else to notice, to intervene, to help, because I reached a point where I didn't know how to communicate what I was feeling."

Now 23 years old and better at managing her mental illness, Urquhart said she remains burdened by unaddressed childhood trauma. She says her mental illness is a weight she will have to carry for the rest of her life and knows it will impact her dream of becoming a novelist. She recently postponed some of her classes due to mental health-related challenges and will be graduating from McMaster University a year later than anticipated.

I was tremendously lucky that my suicide attempt failed. There are kids who don't get lucky. The system fails them."

***

Among Canadian provinces, Manitoba is the clear stand-out for youth mental illness indicators, with almost double the national prevalence of diagnosed mental disorders in children and youth and the country's highest rates of major depressive disorder and generalized anxiety disorder, after adjusting for population.

Last year, Manitoba Advocate for Children and Youth Daphne Penrose released a report profiling 22 young girls who died by suicide in the province. The report identified a trend of persistent underfunding of the youth mental health and addictions system."

Despite the calls for greater investment in youth mental health diagnosis and treatment, change has been slow to come, the report read.

Some resources [have been] added to the system," Penrose said in an interview. But our children deserve much more."

While provinces and school boards have invested millions of dollars in training and staffing, there remains vast untreated demand.

The Peel District School Board, where Arulpirarangah attended, is the second largest in Canada with more than 155,000 students.

Provincial investments in mental health have funded three additional social workers and two more psychologists, shoring up their supply of more than 200 speech, psychology and social-work staff.

Jim Van Buskirk, chief social worker for the board for 13 years until he retired in January, estimates that the current staffing ratio is about one social worker for every five schools, or about 3,400 students.

In an ideal world, we'd have a social worker and a psychologist in every school," said Van Buskirk. I don't know if we'll ever see that happen."

Over his almost-33-year career as a social worker at the Peel board, Van Buskirk saw several student suicides. Cascading spread of suicidal ideation is common, he said.

Any time a suicide occurs of a student in a school, it has profound and long-lasting impacts," Van Buskirk said.

In a situation where a student who is perceived to be highly successful and competent...some people might respond with the thinking that, you know, Boy, if that's what happened to him, who am I?' You know, like: My life's not nearly as together as his, and still, whatever his problems were were enough to cause him to want to do this.' "

The best response, he said, is clear.

If all we're doing is responding to crises, we're never getting upstream of some of the issues that might create the crises," he said. Research has shown for decades ... that prevention and early intervention far outweighs treatment in terms of its efficacy and cost-effectiveness."

***

Arulpirarangah never completed his final exams. But his diploma was awarded posthumously - a tribute Hoppie personally arranged.

The former principal invited family members to the convocation ceremony, but their chairs in the Castlebrooke auditorium sat empty that day.

It's not something we could handle at the time," recalls Arulpirarangah's sister, Apinayah.

The family moved to Vancouver last year to escape their Brampton home where Arulpirarangah's room had remained untouched.

It was a daily reminder of what our life is and what's missing from our life."

Today, Apinayah, her older brother and cousin run a mental health organization called Varman's Smile - in honour of Abivarman - with the help of roughly $30,000 gathered from an online fundraising campaign.

The group hosts events and connects with youth on social media to spread awareness of mental illness in communities, like hers, where stigma is still very present.

In August, IJB and Star reporters connected Hoppie to Arulpirarangah's family. The principal wanted to make another attempt at delivering the teen's graduation items.

Thanya said Hoppie gave her a printed picture of her cousin she had never seen before. She shared the photo with the rest of her family.

It was hard when I gave it to my grandma and she started bawling her eyes out," she said. It's just the fact that he could have graduated high school if we were there to just hold his hand."

With files from Candice Lipski/University of British Columbia

This is the eighth in a series of stories examining youth mental health, part of a cross-border investigation involving graduate students from the University of Toronto's Dalla Lana School of Public Health and journalism faculty and students from the following universities: Stanford University, Temple University, University of Missouri, University of Syracuse, City University of New York, University of British Columbia, Ryerson University, McGill University and King's College University.

Robert Cribb is a Toronto-based investigative reporter for the Star. Reach him via email: rcribb@thestar.ca