After suicide, parents fight for better care in mental health
On April 28, 2022, just four days shy of her 21st birthday, we lost our daughter, Kaitlyn Roth, to suicide.
Today, two years later, we continue advocating for higher quality, more easily accessible mental-health care.
Today, we call on the government to urgently and immediately fund alternate destination clinics and youth wellness hubs provincewide.
Kaitlyn was a bright, successful, beautiful young woman, described by others as compassionate, gentle, kind-hearted and loving; the type of person who naturally made others feel listened to and welcomed in any situation.
She was a third-year University of Waterloo student who had dreams of working with children with special needs.
Sadly, we are just one of too many families who have experienced the loss of a loved one due to mental illness. The sheer loss of human potential due to our floundering mental-health-care system is unquantifiable.
We know that about 4,500 people die by suicide each year in Canada and that suicide is the second leading cause of death among young adults. Long waitlists and gaps in the system mean our youth are falling through the cracks.
The most unfortunate aspect of our loss is that Kaitlyn truly wanted to get better — she initiated the calls for help and was denied.
We were faced with many barriers to accessing care, including long wait times at the emergency room, which we learned is not a suitable place to treat mental illness. Even for mental-health support services, there seemed to be a “checkbox system” that Kaitlyn didn’t fit into.
It’s hard to hear “no, sorry, you don’t qualify, or “no, sorry, there’s a two-year waitlist.” We will continue this work until families like ours, who still have a chance, can get the care they deserve.
People experiencing mental-health concerns need access to high-quality care that is accessible, co-ordinated and outside of the emergency department. Alternate destination clinics and youth wellness hubs provide this care.
Alternate destination clinics — clinics that are separate from hospitals and dedicated to mental-health care — provide traumainformed and therapeutic environments, staffed by professionals trained extensively in mental health and addictions.
This concurrent-care approach aims to enhance recovery outcomes, improve collaboration among health-care professionals, and optimize resource allocation by reducing the strain on overwhelmed hospitals and health-care workers. We have seen this work in London, Ont., and in other communities, and call on the government to fund this model provincewide.
Youth wellness hubs provide high-quality, integrated youth services to support the well-being of young people aged 12 to 25, including mental-health and substance-use supports, primary health care, community, and social supports and more.
Youth Wellness Hubs Ontario (YWHO) is dedicated to helping young people find the right services, at the right time, in the right place. Currently, there are 27 YWHO hub networks operating across Ontario, but we need one in every community.
The government must view this needed strategic investment in alternate destination clinics and youth wellness hubs within the context of the full spectrum of health care — not separate from but part of.
This would allow us to both alleviate the pressures on emergency rooms, police, and paramedics, and get people the care they deserve.
The system failed Kaitlyn, but we can create a new, better one for others like her.
These evidence-based models can more appropriately respond to the mental-health crises our young adults face, and we hope the government will resource them — before it’s too late.