Recently, in Vancouver, British Columbia, we became aware, once again, of the cracks in mental health services. They failed to help those in need and they failed to protect the public from harm. At a Filipino Street Festival in South Vancouver on Saturday, April 26, a mentally ill man drove his SUV into the crowd and killed 11 people and injured dozens more.
What We Know
In an article in the Globe and Mail, Wendy Cox, the Globe and Mail report wrote: “Lo was an involuntary outpatient in the care of a community mental-health team at the time of the attack. He was forced into hospital under the Mental Health Act in 2023 and 2024 and had recently been deemed a high risk for his mental health to decline…”
She also wrote: “His care team had concerns that Lo was unwilling to take his medication for schizophrenia and about two weeks before the attack, Lo’s psychiatrist suggested his dosage may be insufficient to be considered therapeutic.”
We also learned that Lo was dealing with considerable tragedy, the murder of his brother and his mother’s attempted suicide, certainly events that could trigger any fragile mind.
Lo’s care team said there were no red flags. Well, the fact he didn’t want to take his meds is a big one. But with the laws the way they are, protective of a patient’s rights, the psychiatric staff couldn’t force him to take what was needed to prevent his tragedy. Their hands were tied.
In response to the tragedy, Premier of British Columbia, David Eby vowed to review the Mental Health Act. However, mental health advocates cautioned the government not to be hasty in their conclusions about what was needed to fix the system.
A North American Problem
The Vancouver mass killing was done by a mentally ill man with an automobile. We’ve seen this type of mass killing before, in New Orleans recently, and in Toronto years back.
Cracks in mental health services have also been highlighted in news stories about mass shootings in America. It’s too easy to buy and make firearms that land in the hands of those who are unwell.
Because of fears of losing their gun rights (that old 2nd Amendment), too many Americans keep saying it’s not the guns that kill, it’s the mentally ill person. That’s true enough, but since it continues to be challenging to take care of the mentally ill in our communities and insure safety for the public, isn’t it better to err on the side of caution? Isn’t it better to restrict the sale of lethal weapons (AK47s and similar assault weapons) that should only be in the hands of the police or the military? Isn’t about time to do something about gun control?
Because of the cracks in mental health services, our governments need to work on putting public safety first by improving access to psychiatric services and tightening gun laws. Trump has been worrying about fentanyl crossing from Canada to the USA when it isn’t much of an issue at all. Rather, he should be concerned about the amount of guns crossing from the USA into Canada and Mexico. It’s a huge business.
Just read Gun Love by Jennifer Clement, who studied the problem of guns in Mexico. Mexico has only one gun shop, and that’s in Mexico City. The southern American border is dotted with gun shops that provide guns to Mexicans.
We also need to bring back involuntary care, both for the good of the mentally ill person who can’t manage the demons on their own and the good of society in general. There’s only so much psychiatric staff in the community can do. They can’t monitor the mentally ill 24/7.
A Bit of History
Asylums have largely disappeared. They began losing ground back in the late 1960s, when more attention was placed on patient rights. The problems with involuntary admissions was illuminated by stories like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, a novel by Ken Kesey, released in 1962 in the middle of the civil rights movement.
In the book, the author Ken Kesey succeeded in underlining the brutality of psychiatric help at that time, especially the indiscriminate use of electro-convulsive therapy. The book was later adapted into a 1975 film starring Jack Nicholson.
In the 1960s and 1970s, lawyers got involved, clamouring for patient rights in British Columbia and elsewhere in North America. The health authorities responded by downsizing the mental health institutions and then eliminating them altogether.
My Husband’s Experience in Mental Health
My husband worked in mental health as a psychogeriatric social worker. In the late 1990s, he used to visit a scaled-down Riverview, an asylum in Coquitlam, British Columbia, once a week, to attend meetings to discuss the elderly who were to be released into the community. When the province of British Columbia began shutting down Riverview, responsibility for the care of the mentally ill was transferred to the community. Unfortunately, we’ve seen over time, that this has not worked as well as they had hoped.
When these mentally ill patients were released, they were virtually left on their own, many becoming homeless on the streets of Vancouver, unable to manage taking their much-needed psychotropic drugs in a timely manner. They either forgot or didn’t want to. They were also vulnerable to being robbed and beaten. They became victims when what they needed was help to make sense of their world.
Closing the asylums in Canada and the USA in the late 1960s and 1970s was like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The cracks in mental health services were fully exposed.
My Experience in Mental Health
I worked in mental health as a clinical social worker for twenty-five years. I witnessed psychiatrists, nurses, and various other mental health personnel do their best in caring for those who had trouble coping in society. But unlike traditional medicine, which largely focuses on the physical body, the study and practice of mental health is an inexact science. I saw files with psychiatric diagnoses change from one month to the next. Because people are unpredictable, and emotions can overtake reason, it’s difficult to reliably assess who is at risk of hurting themselves or others. Especially people with psychosis, in other words people who’ve lost contact with reality.
I recall how horrified I felt in 1972, when I worked on a psychiatric ward and found that the psychiatrists were prescribing ECT at the Winnipeg General Hospital (now Health Sciences Centre).
I was so traumatized by what I had experienced that, later in years, I wrote the novel The Rubber Fence, set on a psych ward.
Shock treatment is still debated. There are some who say they’ve been helped by the treatment; others say they’ve lost their memory and the ability to function. This book tells the story of a psychiatric intern who risks her career and her marriage when she tries to stop an arrogant psychiatrist from shocking her patients.
We are the Caretakers, the Guardians, the Emotional Gardeners
I just published Along Came A Gardener, a non-fiction book based on my 25 years of working in mental health. Selena Mercouri, book reviewer, wrote about it for the B.C. Book Review.
It’s for anyone wanting tips on managing life’s emotional roller coaster. It’s a guide on how to get help and when to ask for it. This self-help book covers a range of mental health problems, ones many of us encounter in our life. And it weaves in lessons from my garden.
Takeaways from the Vancouver Tragedy
Though Lo’s story illustrates the cracks in mental health services, psychiatric help and support from other practitioners is needed for all levels of society. Without them, we’d have a whole lot more ‘Los’. He was obviously suffering. He was a runaway train.
World Mental Health Month
With May being World Mental Health month, it’s another reminder to take care of ourselves and those in need. My ebook of Along Came A Gardener is normally $9.95 but for the month of May, in recognition of mental health needs, it’s been reduced to $2.99 US. Canadians can also get it for $2.99.
Available on Amazon, Kobo, Nook, Apple, etc.
If you decide to read it and like it, please leave an honest review on the site where you bought it.
