“The Crown prosecutor and RCMP warned me my son is a danger to himself and others on the Sunshine Coast”

“We provide health care, but there are going to be gaps in the system” — Carrie Stefanson, Vancouver Coastal Health 

Mary (not her real name) is a quiet, unassuming woman. At 70, she just wants to live a peaceful life in her spacious townhouse in Gibsons. But the Crown prosecutor in Sechelt and the RCMP just warned her not to have any contact with her son, who suffers from a mental illness, because he is considered a danger to himself, to her, and to members of the public. His whereabouts on the Sunshine Coast are unknown.

David (not his real name), 35, is just out of jail for uttering threats. At this time, there is little help available for him. “We provide [mental] health care, but there are going to be gaps in the system, absolutely,” Carrie Stefanson, public affairs spokesperson at Vancouver Coastal Health, told The Coast Clarion.

At 15, David became delusional and stayed at Children’s Hospital in Vancouver for two months. He had no definite diagnosis for many years, though it was acknowledged that he suffered psychotic episodes. It has only been in recent years that he was diagnosed with schizophrenia, probably inherited from his grandfather.

Medication helped, but as soon as he started to feel better, David would stop taking his meds because he thought he no longer needed them or because the side effects bothered him. Not taking meds invariably led to psychosis, and sometimes delusional and paranoid episodes. He has also been self-medicating with crystal meth since he was 19.

David has rented accommodation in the Vancouver area in the past, but has always lost his housing due to his drug use and psychosis. In 2014, while living in New Westminster, he went off his meds again and became seriously delusional. Anticipating trouble, Mary contacted mental health workers but was told there was nothing they could do unless David came to them voluntarily. Finally, New Westminster police persuaded David to register with New Westminster Mental Health. 

By then, his landlady had had enough, and David’s worker at New Westminster Mental Health asked Mary if David could stay with her until they found him new housing in New Westminster. Mary consented, thinking the situation would be temporary. 

But finding housing for a person like David proved difficult and, after a few weeks, New Westminster mental health services cut him off, saying he’d been living “too long” with Mary. 

Fraser Health Authority covers New Westminster, but Gibsons lies within Vancouver Coastal Health Authority boundaries, so to get help he had to approach Sunshine Coast mental health services on a voluntary basis, which he eventually did. 

While Mary’s partner was suffering with terminal leukemia, David’s behaviour was aggressive towards Mary. “I was afraid of him,” she says. “He is over six feet tall and weighs more than 200 pounds. I kept thinking about the mother in Selma Park who was killed by her psychotic son.”

She phoned Sunshine Coast mental health and addiction services in Sechelt. “I was frantic, I was in a house with a dying man and a man who could go psychotic at any moment,” she says. “But all the worker said was ‘What do you want me to do about it? Call the police if he threatens you.’ What I really wanted was tips on how to defuse the situation before it got to that point; I didn’t want to wait until it might be too late.”

Basically, mental health services can do nothing unless a person is certified, Mary says. “Maybe the police will take you to the hospital. A psychiatrist might decide compulsory treatment is necessary, but there are probably no beds. They usually keep you in the hospital overnight and let you go the next day with a prescription. David has been discharged with nowhere to go more than once.”

 At home, the situation became almost unbearable. After her partner’s death, a lot of David’s resentment was directed at Mary. He blamed her for calling the police on him in New Westminster and for doing nothing while he was “being tortured” at Children’s Hospital in 1998. When she questioned him about the “torture”, he reported classic schizophrenic symptoms — strange noises, weird smells, and overheard conversations that he assumed were about him.

The delusions (which have grown to include plots by the FBI, the CIA, the KGB and the Illuminati) are amplified by crystal meth. “It makes him feel powerful, invincible,” Mary says. “Though he’s never physically threatened me, he could hurt me and I want to prevent that from happening. But the mental health system isn’t oriented to prevention; they seem to operate on a crisis-management model.”

In 2015, David was officially certified as having a mental illness, for which he blames Mary. The measure was taken in order to force him to take his medication, but it has not made as much difference as Mary had hoped. Mental health and addiction services in Sechelt told Mary they do no drug testing and he could not be forced to seek help for his addiction.

Stints in rehab have not been successful. At one recovery house, the addictions doctor took David off his anti-psychotics because no mind-altering drugs of any kind were allowed. This resulted in him becoming paranoid, not co-operating, and being asked to leave.

In 2016, David was given a subsidized suite, but there was little supervision, and in the fall of 2017 he was evicted for drug use and excessive partying.  He moved back in with Mary, because the alternative was homelessness, and this time he was with a girlfriend who also did drugs and had psychological problems.  

Their part of the townhouse became a disaster — garbage everywhere, hoarding, no effort to keep things clean. “The mind of someone suffering psychosis often seems to be completely absorbed by delusions,” Mary says. “They aren’t thinking in terms of keeping things clean or what it’s like to have to live with them.”

Last summer David was given his regular shot of medication too late and became delusional, accidentally starting a fire with a hotplate. Mary phoned the police and told the officer she wanted him to go to the hospital for proper care. “The hospital won’t take him,” the officer told her. “If you kick him out, he is going to be homeless.” Mary settled for confiscating the hotplate. 

In the next few days, more delusional behaviour followed: David was convinced the next-door neighbour had been entering Mary’s unit via a “secret passageway” when no one was home. Mary made David and his girlfriend leave, and got a no-contact order. Now David was homeless, but it was summer and he lived in a tent.

When the weather turned bad, he asked if he could stay with Mary again, without the girlfriend, until he could go to Burnaby for three to six months of court-ordered rehab and mental health help. As it was supposed to be only a matter of weeks, and because she feared for him being homeless as winter approached, Mary agreed, but the stay quickly became intolerable because of drug use and verbal abuse directed at her. After a month, she asked him to leave, and David is once more homeless. 

Mary does not want him living with her again. “David needs a place where he is supervised by trained staff, with drug monitoring, counselling and cleaners. This costs taxpayer money, but those costs would be recovered with savings in terms of less hospital care and decreased involvement of the criminal justice system. In the midst of this housing crisis, there is nowhere for people with severe mental illnesses to go. 

“These people are out there, suffering. They are frightened and sometimes angry. David’s treatment in Burnaby is likely to be a waste of public money if he is homeless again afterward. If that happens, there is a danger that he will use meth again because it’s better than feeling hungry and cold.” 

Mary has just been told that the treatment in Burnaby is in jeopardy because of his arrest for uttering threats. She believes the system is broken and that families and the general public are expected to take up the slack. “But we aren’t trained to handle people with these problems,” she protests.

David was arrested in Sechelt last Monday. He spent two nights in jail and is out on bail. Both police and the crown prosecutor have warned Mary not to see him because he is a danger to himself and others and because he fosters grudges against her.  

When David was in her home, Mary feared for her own safety. Now she fears for his. “I feel as if this will not end until one of us dies,” she says.

When The Coast Clarion asked Carrie Stefanson of Vancouver Coastal Health for comment, she said no one would be available for an interview. She sent an email about the mental-health and substance-use services available on the Sunshine Coast:

“We have six beds in the mental-health and substance-use inpatient unit at Sechelt Hospital. There is an interdisciplinary team that meets in the hospital every day and plans for all patient discharges. This meeting includes members of all of our community support services. These services include: 

• four psychiatrists; 
• case manager nurses who provide outreach and office based services to patients with persistent mental illness or concurrent disorders in the community; 
• outreach mental health workers; 
• an intensive case-management team consisting of an outreach nurse and two outreach mental health workers (focused on clients with substance use issues and concurrent disorders); 
• a crisis response nurse who coordinates with patients in the Emergency Department and also in the community. She also works with RCMP to do outreach assessment in the community; 
• addictions nurses; 
• older adult nurses; 
• a social worker; 
• a housing coordinator; 
• a vocational rehab program; 
• mental health and addictions counsellors. 

“We do our best to keep people in hospital for as long as their health status requires and to plan for their support in the community, but unless a person is certified on extended leave, we cannot mandate them to engage with our services. Housing is an ongoing challenge on the Sunshine Coast, but we do work to find suitable options, if they exist.

“VCH takes its commitment to both patient and staff safety very seriously. Our clients have the right to receive high quality, safe patient care. Likewise, VCH staff deserve to work in settings that are safe and free from violence.”

Mary does not want this article to make people unduly fearful of the mentally ill. This story is specifically about herself  and David — not all people with mental illnesses abuse drugs or are potentially violent. 

The cure for stigma, she believes, is consistent and appropriate care so that everyone is safe — people with mental illnesses, their family members, and the general public.