B.C. needs youth system: children’s representative
A 17-year-old boy who took his own life on the grounds of a children’s hospital in Vancouver didn’t get the mental health treatment he needed from the time he was two years old, says British Columbia’s representative for children and youth.
Bernard Richard’s report released Wednesday investigates the death of a teen identified by the pseudonym Joshua who died in July 2015 at the BC Children’s Hospital where he had been staying for 122 days.
The review of his death found there were significant gaps and lack of co-ordination in the health system, which Richard said need to be corrected or more children risk falling through the cracks.
The report says Joshua, whose mother was his primary caregiver after his parents separated and later divorced, began showing signs of mental illness when he was two years old but he and his family didn’t receive adequate early and long-term help as his illness escalated into his teens.
“Joshua exhibited signs of serious mental health issues at an extremely young age,” the report says. “He was just two years old when his mother sought help from the Ministry of Children and Family Development because her son was hitting himself and banging his head on walls. He did not receive the early intervention services that may have altered his life trajectory.”
Previous suicide attempts led the teenager to be hospitalized, but he was kept in an adult psychiatric ward because facilities more appropriate for youth were lacking, it says.
It recommends the new Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions implement a comprehensive system that offers a full continuum of mental health services for children and youth. It is the report’s only recommendation and the government said it will act on it.
“If this sounds familiar, it is because you have heard it from this office before,” Richard said at a news conference.
Richard said he’s “encouraged” that the recommendation will finally be acted on because several officials involved in reports making similar recommendations are now cabinet ministers. Despite the complexity of Joshua’s illness, Richard said he “believes that government can do better for its children than what it did for Joshua and his family.”
When Joshua’s health-care providers were planning to discharge him from the hospital, his mother wasn’t able to cope with him at home and officials struggled to find a safe place for him. In the years before his death, the report says Joshua’s mother was offered “extremely limited support” to meet his considerable needs, despite having asked for help.