Editor:
Regarding the article on St. Mary’s Hospital being sued (Coast Reporter, Jan. 9), the public needs to understand that it’s not unusual for hospitals in B.C. to discharge people with a mental illness prematurely or to fail to keep them at all. Families of people with mental illnesses are increasingly frustrated at the neglect displayed by our healthcare system.
The most that ever seems to get done is that the individual is medicated and kept overnight. Then they are sent home (if they have a home). Police have told me that their time and resources are wasted bringing the same people to a hospital repeatedly. Even when adults present themselves at a hospital asking for treatment because they fear they are losing it, they are often turned away.
I recently learned, from a CBC radio news broadcast, that the man who killed his dog a couple of years back has now killed his mother.
This concerns me on two levels: he seems not to have been given meaningful treatment between beating his dog to death and killing his mother (and by meaningful treatment in such a horrendous case, I mean compulsory anti-psychotic injections), and there was a huge public outcry over the dog, but there doesn’t seem to be the same indignation regarding the mother’s death.
Maybe people still believe that mental illness is caused by families, especially mothers. I think that mothers are often targeted because they are the only people still willing to care for their mentally ill children.
Anne Miles, Gibsons
