Man’s suicide days after hospital discharged him prompts review
B.C.’s coroner and Vancouver Island health officials are reviewing the suicide of a 23-year-old Saanich man who killed himself days after being discharged from Royal Jubilee Hospital, despite the objection of family and friends.
A memorial service will be held for Jeffrey Dayne Johnson at Saxe Point on Sunday. He ended his life July 26, five days after he was released from hospital.
“I feel like they failed my friend,” said Lindsay Christensen, 25. “I said if you release him tomorrow, he will end up dead or someone else will end up dead and they released him anyway. They said ‘he seems fine’ and that’s the reaction I got.”
The dead man’s father took seriously his son’s ear- lier suicide threats, when Johnson superficially slashed his wrists and wrote cryptic notes on social media that he was ending his life.
His father called police to have his son committed. Police acted swiftly, found Johnson after a five-hour search, and took him to hospital. “They did a very good job,” said father Jeff Johnson, 51.
Apparently, Dayne Johnson (he went by his second name) had ingested bleach, so he was admitted to a medical floor. He was never transferred to Victoria Mental Health Centre at the Eric Martin Pavilion or Psychiatric Emergency Services at the Archie Courtnall Centre.
Instead, three days after being admitted, he was released — drug addicted and despondent, say family.
“I want to know why they let him go,” said his father. “He was going to die if they let him go and that’s exactly what happened. I’m getting no answers [from VIHA].”
VIHA said it is conducting a case review. “If there are any recommendations from the review that sug- gest things could have been done differently, we would make appropriate changes to the program,” said VIHA spokeswoman Sarah Plank.
Anyone admitted through a VIHA hospital emergency department is assessed for the appropriate type of care, be it primarily medical or psychiatric. A person with mentalhealth issues would have consultation with a psychiatrist and that doctor would advise on what further treatment or care is needed, Plank said.
“A patient is discharged on the referral or advice of the physician,” Plank said. “Obviously, this is tragic so we are reviewing it because we want to make sure we are doing everything we can to make sure something like this doesn’t happen again.”
Family and friends say Jeffrey Dayne Johnson was in too much pain and too tired to carry on when he committed suicide days after being discharged from hospital.
The Vancouver Island Health Authority is reviewing the case of the 23-year-old Saanich man to see if things could have been handled differently.
Johnson was dismayed he had become “one of those people” so drug addicted he didn’t know how to crawl out of the hole he had dug for himself, said his mother, Pam Cooke.
The family says there were mental-health problems on both sides of his family, but no one looked for warning signs until he fell into drug addiction in recent years.
His anxiety was so severe that he complained to his mother of his racing heart and shortness of breath. Sometimes, he didn’t know whether to sit or stand or go to the hospital. Sometimes, he would ask his mother to just lie beside him until it went away and he could fall asleep.
Antidepressants didn’t seem to work for him, or he didn’t get the right treatment or the right prescription, said Cooke. Instead, he self-medicated with street drugs, she said.
“In the end, the hopelessness outweighed his ability to seek help,” Cooke said. “He was hoping all of a sudden things would go back to normal and he wouldn’t be this guy — the guy that’s lost control of his life and not being who he thought he would be.”
About two years ago, Johnson returned to living with his mother. “Life was over and he was sick of everything,” Cooke said.
A few days before he died, Dayne Johnson made what his father, Jeff Johnson, called a cry for help.
“Apparently, he drank some bleach on that night and superficially cut his wrists,” Cooke said.
Jeff Johnson called police in the hopes of having his son committed.
“He never even went to Eric Martin and that blows my mind,” Cooke said. “I just never dreamed he would be on the fourth floor of the hospital.”
When she heard he was being discharged three days later, she talked to his case worker, who said he was fine.
“I don’t care how fine someone seems, two days later you can’t be possibly fine,” Cooke said.
On the day of his death, Cooke let her son sleep throughout the day. She checked on him at 5:30 p.m., and found his body was limp and his lips were blue. Friend Lindsay Christensen and paramedics arrived minutes later.
That morning, Christensen had arranged for him to get into a treatment program. He had told her in hospital that he didn’t trust himself back on the streets, but would go to any treatment program.
“I got the feeling he was just another statistic and this is just the way the system works, unfortunately,” Christensen said. “That’s the sense I got from them. It was kind of like ‘there’s not much we can do.’ ”
“On the discharge day, they called me to pick him up and gave him some pamphlets and flyers,” Christensen said. It was apparent, she said, he was too mentally unstable to organize treatment for himself.
“He was incapable of doing it and he was saying he was incapable of doing it,” Christensen said.
“If he could have stayed in hospital or [the Eric Martin psychiatric facility] until I could get him into treatment, he would still be here,” Christensen said.
“I feel like they failed my friend and it wasn’t even a case where he was fighting to be released. He was saying ‘I want to stay here. I’m safe.’ ” Christensen said. “I said when they released him, ‘What is he to do now?’ ”
“‘That’s for him to figure out,’ they said. Those exact words.”