NDP seeks mental health ER unit in Saskatoon hospital
Imagine reaching out for help during a state of severe mental crisis, but instead of help you are forced into a room alone and locked away for days. Although this might seem like a somewhat unlikely scenario, it was a very real experience for Lucy Mauerhoff’s son.
“For two days and a night, he was in there with the door locked. Every time I would come in to visit him I could hear him sobbing down the hallway, and every time I went in he said ‘Mom I’m going crazier in here.’ ”
Mauerhoff says during the time her son spent locked in the room the only help he received was when the nurses would come in to give him his medication.
In addition to the locked door, a security guard was posted outside the room to watch him.
Experiences like the one Mauerhoff ’s son went through are one of many reasons NDP health critic Danielle Chartier is calling on the provincial government to help fund a seven-bed mental health assessment and short stay emergency unit within the Royal University Hospital.
“This is about dignity and proper support for people with mental health emergencies,” said Chartier. “This government has a mental health and addictions action plan and needs to move on it.”
With the federal government having already committed nearly $158 million to expand mental health services in Saskatchewan over the next 10 years and a private donation of $1 million to make the emergency unit a reality, Chartier says all the provincial government would need to do is cover the staffing costs needed to operate the unit.
Chartier also says if there were a specific unit for people who arrive at the hospital undergoing a mental health crisis, it would also ease some of the pressure on the city’s already overextended emergency rooms — and the extensive wait times mental health patients are forced to face.
Kathy Genest, the mother of another mental health patient, says long wait times are inevitable when someone arrives in the ER in crisis. She remembers one trip to the hospital left her son and herself waiting for 12½ hours to see a doctor — at that point she says she was almost questioning her own sanity.
“It’s an absolute zoo in (the ER) at most times and the staff do the best to their ability — I’m not blaming any of them because they certainly do their part — and of course, there’s heart attacks, strokes and things that are life threatening that have to take priority, so the mental health people get bumped to the very bottom.”