B.C. Chief Coroner Lisa Lapointe speaks about the B.C. Coroners Service report on child and youth suicide during a news conference in Burnaby, B.C., on Sept. 26, 2013.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
A public inquest will be held into the deaths of three people with mental-health issues who died shortly after leaving an Abbotsford, B.C., hospital – but mental-health advocates note that many recommendations from similar inquests have not been enacted.
The BC Coroners Service announced this week that it will hold an inquest into the deaths of Brian David Geisheimer, 30; Sebastien Pavit Abdi, 19; and Sarah Louise Charles, 41.
All three died shortly after leaving Abbotsford Regional Hospital, where they had been taken by police for mental-health reasons. Under Section 28 of B.C.'s Mental Health Act, the police can immediately take a person to a physician if an officer believes that person has a mental illness and could be a safety risk to self or others.
Mr. Geisheimer's father, Daryl, said police took his son to the hospital last winter after he attempted to harm himself. Two weeks into his stay, he walked away from the facility and committed suicide. The BC Coroners Service cannot comment on the cause of the three deaths, but said there were similarities among them and none involved foul play.
Ana Novakovic works as a program and development co-ordinator at the BC Schizophrenia Society, which has been examining the verdicts of inquests involving people with mental illness. Under the jurisdiction of the Fraser Health Authority alone, there have been three deaths since 2008 involving improper monitoring and discharge of people with mental illness that resulted in coroner's inquests, Ms. Novakovic said.
"On one hand, [holding an inquest] is encouraging because getting an inquest into a death is very, very difficult. I think the fact that the coroner's office has identified these deaths as requiring an inquest shows that they're being taken seriously and it will hopefully highlight the situation and lead to some changes," she said. "But on the other hand, it does also bring into question the usefulness of the inquest and the recommendations, if you can see the same ones over and over again without concrete changes being made."
The agency followed up with 16 agencies – including health authorities and the Ministry of Health – regarding past recommendations, but most of the responses it received were "vague," Ms. Novakovic said.
One of the three earlier inquests looked at the 2008 death of a 22-year-old Mission man diagnosed with schizophrenia. The day after police took him to the hospital under the Mental Health Act, he fled the hospital, but police apprehended him again and took him to a different hospital with a more specialized level of care. After three days waiting for a bed in the psychiatric unit, he was found dead in a staff bathroom. He had died by suicide.
Recommendations from that inquest included training to ensure health-care workers understand that "when the police deliver a patient under the [Mental Health Act], it is [their] responsibility to ensure that these patients are unable to elope or wander freely about the hospital."
One of the other two deaths involved a 59-year-old woman who was involuntarily committed at Riverview Hospital in 2011. Five days after being reported missing, a passerby found her body. She had died of cold exposure. The third death involved a 53-year-old man who was in and out of Delta Hospital shortly before he was struck and killed by a vehicle.
The inquest into the three recent deaths begins May 16, 2016, in Burnaby.
The Fraser Health Authority did not respond to requests for an interview on Friday.
Jonny Morris, senior director of public policy, research and planning at the Canadian Mental Health Association's B.C. division, echoed Ms. Novakovic's sentiments, adding that there is an opportunity for something good to arise from such tragedies.
"It is a welcome thing that there is going to be an inquest, but it's clear that there have been lots of recommendations over the years," he said. "So I'm left with the question: What does it take for us to act together to prevent [future deaths]? What would it take to move this forward?"
Section 28 apprehensions have climbed year after year in Abbotsford. There were 407 apprehensions in 2012, 441 in 2013 and 486 in 2014. There have been 347 such apprehensions from Jan. 1 to Aug. 1 of this year. Between 10 and 15 per cent of all police calls involve a mental-health component, said Constable Ian MacDonald, spokesman for the Abbotsford Police Department.
In Vancouver, there were 2,636 Section 28 apprehensions in 2012, 2,873 in 2013 and 3,010 in 2014.
Andrea Woo