Young addicts face hospital lockup
‘Emergency measure’ would see teens detained against their will
Teenagers with severe drug addictions can be forced to stay in hospital, against their will, if they have a serious overdose, under new provincial legislation introduced on Tuesday.
“This is a new and much-needed tool in our tool box to help youth with severe substance use challenges and their families,” Judy Darcy, the minister of mental health and addictions, said in a statement.
“Experts are telling us this emergency measure is vital to ensure the immediate safety of young people in crisis.”
The move comes after British Columbia recorded 170 illicit drug deaths in May, the province’s highest monthly total. The shocking number was a 93 per cent increase over May 2019, and a 44 per cent jump over this April. The B.C. Coroners
Service says youth represent about one per cent of B.C.’s 6,000 fatal drug overdoses since 2015.
Darcy announced amendments to the Mental Health Act that allow officials to take people 18 and under, if they have a “life-threatening ” overdose, into “short-term involuntary emergency stabilization” inside hospitals with psychiatric or observation units. These young people will be kept for two to seven days, until they have a discharge plan that could involve psychologists, Indigenous elders, and help for their substance use.
The legislation was based, Darcy said, on the advice of doctors and youth advocates, who argue it will keep teenagers safe in the short term and improve the chances of getting them into long-term recovery.
Reporters asked Darcy, though, if there will be enough beds available for youth who want them, since B.C.’s treatment facilities often have long waiting lists. She said the NDP has “been working flat-out” to add more beds, but has also expanded other options such as the one-stop Foundry centres, more outreach inside schools, and more services for Indigenous peoples. SEE DRUG TREATMENT ON A2
Chief coroner Lisa Lapointe raised concerns about the legislation on Tuesday, arguing previous coroner’s inquests and death reviews show the ministry’s priority should be creating a more comprehensive treatment system. Without that, she said, “I’m concerned there is the potential for serious unintended consequences as a result of these legislative amendments, including the potential for an increase in fatalities.”
Lapointe worries the changes could stop some youth from asking for help, if they fear it will result in being locked up in hospital against their will.
While not everyone agrees with the concept of forcing youth into involuntary care, there are parents in B.C. who have been lobbying for years for this change in desperate bids to save their children. Surrey’s Nicola DeSousa told Postmedia two years ago that she would like B.C.’s Mental Health Act to be more like Alberta’s, where police can take a drug user who is “acting in a manner that could cause harm to themselves or others” to a hospital to be assessed. This can result in the patient being sent to an addiction treatment program against their will.
“When you are so far into addiction that you don’t care if you die as long as you have a fix, then you’re not well and you shouldn’t be making life choices,” DeSousa, whose young son was battling a serious addiction, said in July 2018.
At the time, Darcy was one year into her role as B.C.’s first mental health and addictions minister, and said involuntary care was just one of many options being considered to improve the addictions treatment system, which she said had been underfunded by the previous Liberal government.
On Tuesday, the Liberals criticized Darcy’s announcement as not going far enough. While in opposition, Jane Thornthwaite, the critic for mental health and addictions, has advocated other solutions, such as helping young people find safe spaces to recover from substance abuse.
“Today’s proposed legislation is very cumbersome, and it remains to be seen how it will help youth at their most vulnerable, especially those suffering from addiction,” Thornthwaite said Tuesday.
The NDP, though, provided comments from several high-profile experts who appear to back the involuntary care idea.
One of those, Dzung Vo, who is the head of adolescent health and medicine at B.C. Children’s Hospital, said there is “an urgent need to address life-threatening overdoses in adolescents and a duty to protect them in these moments of crisis when their capacity, insight,
judgment and autonomy are impaired.”
Vo said the hospital has been running a pilot project in which adolescents are admitted on a shortterm basis after a major overdose, supported through withdrawal, and then connected to various social, mental health and family supports.
The Vancouver Aboriginal Child and Family Services Society said in a statement that this pilot program has “shifted the life trajectory of several of our young people,” and therefore backs the legislative changes.