People First Radio – November 13, 2025People First Radio – November 13, 2025
People First Radio
Dr. Sean Kelly discusses rising youth opioid use, treatment gaps, and the need for accessible care alongside mental health support, while children’s author Kathleen Arneson shares how dyslexia, folklore, and appreciative inquiry shape her writing and teaching. Together, their conversations highlight systemic challenges and personal strengths in facing addiction, mental health, and creative life.
0:00•14 Nov 2025
Youth Opioids, Hidden Folk, and Finding the Silver Lining
Episode Overview
- Youth opioid use, especially non-medical prescription use, is rising and skewing younger, while access to evidence-based medications like methadone and buprenorphine is declining.
- Dr. Sean Kelly stresses that youth face both opioid use disorder and serious mental health conditions, and that both need timely, affordable treatment without financial barriers.
- He argues that strengthening community-based care and provider networks, rather than focusing only on residential treatment, is key to changing long-term outcomes.
- Kathleen Arneson shows how dyslexia can be a strength for imagination and critical thinking, and how disciplined reading helped her become a writer.
- Arneson emphasises appreciative inquiry, looking for silver linings and working from strengths, as a way to stay out of “swim[ming] in negativity” and to help children tell honest, healing stories.
““This editorial is meant to say, why don’t we put pressure on the wound and stop the bleeding?””
How do people find hope in the darkest times? This edition of People First Radio brings together medicine and storytelling to look at youth substance use and personal resilience from two very different angles. First up, Ottawa paediatrician and adolescent addiction specialist Dr. Sean Kelly talks about rising youth opioid use and why he believes Canada’s response is falling short.
Drawing on data from the Ontario Student Drug Use and Health Survey, he notes a “nearly doubling to 21.8% of youth who reported using prescription opioids in a non-prescription way” and points out that younger students in grades seven to nine are reporting higher use than older teens. He explains how hydromorphone “dillies” have moved from the fringes into the high-school mainstream, and why he finds that “incredibly frightening”.
Kelly argues that youth face a “confluence of two crises” – opioid use and serious mental health issues – and that care has not kept up. While prescriptions for life-saving medications such as methadone and buprenorphine are falling, he says youth treatment remains “the bottleneck”, with long waits, patchy services, and families blocked by out-of-pocket costs. His image of society “getting better mops” to clean up overdose deaths instead of “put[ting] pressure on the wound” sticks with you long after.
The second half shifts tone but stays rooted in strength and recovery. Victoria-based children’s author Kathleen Arneson shares how she writes for young readers while living with dyslexia, and how a workshop on appreciative inquiry “changed my life totally”. She talks about Icelandic huldufolk, teaching children to own their stories without “lie[ing] about their life”, and finding the “silver lining in everything” without pushing time or “swim[ming] in negativity”.
If you’re interested in youth addiction, mental health, creativity, or just need a reminder that change is possible even when systems feel stuck, this conversation might leave you asking: where could you add your voice to this work?
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