Privacy and saving lives

Kelly Mitchell would have done anything to save her child’s life. So would Laureen Rushton, Carolyn Fox, Michele Haire, Sheila Burke and Louann Link.

These six grieving mothers have written first-person accounts they are generously sharing with Saltwire readers over the next several weeks in hopes of preventing other parents from watching helpless from the outside while their children struggle inside the mental health system.

Their stories are painfully similar and their goal is united. Protecting a patient’s privacy when they are at risk of suicide, should not override parents’ ability to act in their child’s best interest.

Mitchell’s daughter Aidaen was an elementary school child when she began seeing psychiatrists about her self-harming.

“I cannot help but grind my teeth over the fact that Aidaen was over 12 and without her consent we were not allowed access to the medical information we needed to help keep her alive. Her death certificate had already been signed,” Mitchell writes in her opinion article, which will run later in the series.

Kelly and her husband Scott breathed a sigh of relief when, after years of torment, Aidaen suddenly seemed to get better. No one told them this was a sign that their only child had made peace with a plan to end her life.

Aidaen died in February 2019, only a few weeks shy of her 15th birthday.

The death rate for 15-19 year olds due to self-harm was 7.4 per 100,000 across the country in 2022. While Statistics Canada didn’t publish breakdowns for ages by province, the overall national suicide rate at 9.2 was surpassed in every Atlantic province except New Brunswick (7.2).

Nova Scotia had the highest at 13.2, followed by 11.2 in Newfoundland and Labrador and 9.8 in Prince Edward Island.

There are many complex reasons people resort to this extreme measure, and involving close family members in the health-care decision-making process won’t save every life. But there are examples of programs and legislation elsewhere that are worth consideration in Atlantic Canada.

A program at some hospitals in Ontario provides patients who have already survived a suicide attempt with tools to understand their darkest emotions. The Skills for Safer Living program also has participants write a letter when they’re well to rely on when their mental break renders them unable to make health decisions. The letter includes people close to them the hospital can call to speak for them.

Manitoba also passed legislation in 2019 that allows for proxies — usually loving parents — to be informed of a person’s crisis and involved in steps for treating it.

Nova Scotia has already considered a similar bill, called Cayley’s Law, named after Fox’s daughter who died at 21. That bill never passed into law.

Rushton writes about her late son, Lucas, who left treatment at age 18: “We don’t let elderly dementia patients make decisions about when they can come and go and what substances they can consume, but because Lucas was young, his mental state did not figure into his ability to make those life-altering decisions.”

While privacy is a fundamental concern in health care, so is preventing death.

NOTE: If you are having a mental health crisis, seek help immediately by calling 911 or visiting an emergency department.