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Kids Help Phone typically sees similar numbers of calls and texts over the course of a year, Sanderson said, but expects texting to pull ahead this year because of the increase in demand. He said the largest group reaching out for support in Ontario was youth between 14 and 17.

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The most common concerns include anxiety and stress, relationship problems, depression, isolation and thoughts of self-harm and suicide, Sanderson said.

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For Amany, the appeal of texting is easy to understand.

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Young people may finally have privacy after everyone else in the house has gone to bed, she said. She added that texting also gives them time to put difficult feelings into words without having to say them aloud.

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“Young people are still carrying a level of distress that really doesn’t switch off at bedtime,” Amany said.

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Tracy Vaillancourt, a University of Ottawa professor and Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in youth mental health and violence prevention, said the nighttime demand did not surprise her.

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During the day, young people may have friends or family members available for support. At night, those supports can disappear just as young people are left alone to dwell on their problems.

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“A lot of times kids ruminate before they go to bed about their distress,” Vaillancourt said. “All that extra thinking makes them more distressed.”

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Vaillancourt said older teenagers nowadays were increasingly worried about their futures, including the job market and whether they would be able to afford the lives they wanted to live.

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She said some young people experienced anxiety about climate change, while problems with friends, bullying and family relationships remained persistent sources of distress.

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During the school year, academic pressures are added to the mix.

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Nicole D’Souza, an assistant professor in the University of Ottawa’s School of Epidemiology and Public Health, said the growing use of services should not only be viewed as a negative sign.

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Young people are more comfortable seeking mental health support than previous generations, she said, in part because decades of work to reduce stigma have made reaching out more acceptable.

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D’Souza said their lives were also connected to technology, making services such as texting a natural way to seek help.

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But D’Souza said the health-care system needed to respond to what young people were telling it through that demand.

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“We really need to think about the places young people occupy like schools and neighbourhoods,” she said. “How can we build those scaffolds around them through connection, through their community?”

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Both D’Souza and Vaillancourt said more attention needed to be paid to preventing mental health problems from reaching a crisis point.

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“Right now, our model is mostly an intervention model,” Vaillancourt said. “When people become unwell, then we come in and we try and fix it, and we don’t have a prevention model.”

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D’Souza says that means investing further in schools, neighbourhoods and community connections rather than thinking of mental health care primarily in terms of only hospitals and clinics.

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“A lot more effort and a lot more budget lines need to be put into upstream preventative care,” she said, “so that young people can feel healthy before they reach a crisis point.”

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For Vaillancourt, waiting for young people to simply work through those pressures on their own is not an answer.

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“We tend to think about resilience in young people, and they are resilient to some extent, but they’re not as resilient as the general population thinks they are,” she said. “They do need our support.”

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