Inquiry to reflect on suicide

A public inquiry into the topic of suicide began Monday in Quebec City after three deaths in two years connected to an addiction treatment centre.

Coroner Andrée Kronström began the inquiry by reviewing the causes and circumstances of the deaths of Mikhaël Ryan and his mother Jocelyne Lamothe, in 2017, and that of Marc Boudreau in 2018.

After her review of the causes and circumstances of each death, she will listen to different interest groups, those directly affected by suicides and suicide prevention workers share their thoughts on the subject, according to a statement from the coroner’s office.

The goal is for Kronström to formulate recommendations intended to prevent future deaths by suicide.

The public inquiry was announced in September by Chief Coroner Pascale Descary.

“These three deaths are part of a much broader reflection on suicide,” according to the coroner’s office. “Other cases of death by suicide are being studied and could be added to this inquiry.”

Ryan, who had mental health and addiction problems, left the Centre Le Rucher, an addiction treatment centre 25 kilometres from Quebec City, on May 8, 2017. On the evening of May 10, he visited Lamothe, who was later found dead at her Quebec City home. The following day, Ryan died by suicide when he jumped from the ninth-floor window of a Quebec City hotel.

Boudreau, who also suffered from mental health and addiction troubles, was in treatment at Le Rucher as well; he was admitted on Aug. 28, 2018 after being referred by the psychiatry department of the hospital in which he was an inpatient. On Sept. 22, he was found hanging in a meeting room at the centre.

Corrie Sirota, a Montreal grief, loss and bereavement specialist, said it is her hope that inquiries such as this one “will serve to help people to talk more openly about suicide.

“Education comes from information,” she said. And normalizing the subjects of mental illness and suicide mean people will have conversations about them, she said. But until the topic of mental illness is de-stigmatized, people who contemplate death by suicide will continue to struggle with finding support, Sirota said.

Marie Cyrise, an intervention worker with Suicide Action Montreal from 2017 to this year, who now works at Info-Santé 811, said she hopes a public inquiry will raise awareness of the need for more psycho-social support and for more psychiatric help for young people, in schools and in the community.