One frustrated mother’s odyssey into despair
EDITOR’S NOTE: The following article was sent into The Expositor as an open letter to provincial and municipal governments and by the mother of a teenaged girl expressing her frustration at the gaps within the system of care that is provided to youth. The mother holds a degree in Indigenous Social Work and is employed by a mental health organization in a Northern city. The open letter expresses her frustration with the health care system as it pertains to youth, as well as the youth justice system and the struggle they have faced in navigating through a system that they say is continually failing her daughter. The name and community of the mother have been withheld to protect the privacy of the daughter.
This letter of concern and frustration is addressed to our provinces and cities lack of services/assistance with regards to child and youth mental health, as well as criminal justice.
I am a mother of a now 15-year-old daughter who has been struggling with mental health related issues for one year now. It began with low self-esteem, anxiety and self-harm.
This would be the beginning of the scariest and most exhausting roller coaster of my life, and hers. Being an indigenous woman with a Degree in Indigenous Social Work who also holds her culture close to her heart, I first sought the help of our elders and traditional ceremony. It did her well at first but then we had to return to the city after ceremony, where she was then exposed to the many influences and social expectations of being a teenager, not to mention the history of trauma her family and indigenous people as a whole have had to endure. I myself am a former Crown ward of the child welfare system; I have an extensive amount of lived experience with the youth justice system, and mental health system. I have to credit the youth justice system, of my day, in helping me to acquire much of my high school education and in keeping me off drugs and alive! My life hasn’t been all sunshine and rainbows but I’ve worked hard to heal my own hurts and trauma for the betterment of my children. We must keep in mind that trauma is intergenerational and mental health related issues often hereditary.
My daughter’s self-harm became more evident in March of last year (2016), I could see she was struggling internally with the emotions she was facing on a daily basis. So I took her to crisis downtown who at the time offered her some breathing techniques to help calm herself and ease her anxiety and to situate herself using the five focus rule. Self-harm was deemed as a trending norm among teens. The techniques offered to her were futile, soon after she would have numerous crises’ situations within her high school. Sudbury school boards are not equipped to handle mental health crisis, they told me this themselves. When my daughter experienced a crisis an ambulance would be called and police after she had locked herself in the washroom, saying she wanted to kill herself that people were talking about her, she would hear them. (This was not so, but rather something she was experiencing within her mind.)
These multiple episodes paved the way for crisis intervention within our home, this is where we were referred to a doctor (not a psychiatrist), who immediately wished to prescribe her benzodiazepines, to a 14-year-old teenager! For those who do not know these are a highly addictive drug and no way was I going to have my 14-year-old daughter put on these. However, at this point everything I had tried to put before her, traditional and mainstream, in an attempt to help proved to be non-effective, so I left the choice up to her: “Do you feel like you need medication to help you feel better?” “Yes I do mom, I don’t like feeling like this, I don’t want to harm myself, I don’t like hearing people whisper about me.” I told the doctor, if she feels like she needs medication I will sign off on it, but under no circumstance are you to put her on benzodiazepines.
So now we have medication and she began seeing a clinician at the local child and family centre. There she was referred to a child psychiatrist. But her multiple admissions into the hospital and being “formed” (the process under which a person is taken into care) under the Mental Health Act as being a threat to herself or others, is what got her to see a psychiatrist sooner than child and family would be able to offer her. She was first seen by an adult psychiatrist at the hospital, who prescribed her Prozac, normally given to adults, then a week or so later after she was “formed” yet again, she was prescribed another cocktail of medication by a child psychiatrist, who told us “she should not be on this medication (Prozac).” At this point I’m feeling serious frustration with this system of mental health care within our city, we were being bounced around.
My daughter’s behaviour soon became uncontrollable. She was experiencing violent outbursts that were projected first toward objects, holes in my walls, doors kicked in, items smashed and then toward family members and even her pets. One incident resulted in police involvement after she had brutally assaulted her brother in the back of my car, I could not stop her, I could not intervene, and she was trapped within her rage and could not stop. We removed ourselves from the vehicle and called for police. This incident led to child welfare involvement as my daughters’ behaviour now posed a risk to my son’s safety. He would need to be removed from the home. As a mother I was faced with choosing between my two children at this point, I knew I did not have the capacity to care for my daughter and everything that she was experiencing, I knew already that my mental emotional and spiritual tank was nearing empty. So I agreed to sign a temporary care agreement with child welfare and have my daughter placed in a group home.
In the group home her behaviour continued and gradually escalated. The damage she caused to the group home in her fits of rage would lead to criminal charges of mischief; her physical aggression toward staff would lead to assault charges. Now she is before the courts. And let me tell you a lot has changed with the youth criminal justice act since I was a youth. (Yes I found myself before the courts a time or two as well.) On one such bail appearance I stood before a female judge: “your honour, I have been accessing every service I can think of to help my daughter, she’s been put on medication, sent to therapy and yet continually poses a risk to herself, and now to others which is why we are before you today. From my understanding it is your job to ensure that the public is safe and that my daughter is safe, by releasing her today you put my daughter and the public at risk.” She was denied bail and put over to youth court.
When sentencing came, she received a conditional discharge. The judge himself telling me “the youth justice system is designed to rehabilitate the youth, to offer them an opportunity to access the services they require with the community and let me tell you Sudbury is very well equipped with a number of services that would benefit your daughter.” I replied, “your honour, we have been accessing these services and they are proving to be ineffective.”
You see my daughter has been admitted into the hospital well over 20 times, having been “formed” under the Mental Health Act. She has been referred by crisis workers downtown several times to the hospital’s crisis team to be seen by a doctor. She sees a psychologist for dialectical behaviour therapy twice a month. Now she has a psychiatrist she sees regularly who continually alters her medication, and now refuses to have my daughter admitted into the child psychiatric floor here within Sudbury because in his very words Sudbury “is not equipped to offer your daughter with the care she needs. Your daughter needs to be in an institution where she will receive intensive dialectical behaviour therapy, will be monitored 24 hours a day and is equipped with padded rooms where she will not be able to hurt herself.” So I respond “okay, so let’s get her there, let’s get her the help she needs.”
A light bulb moment arose, keeping in mind what her psychiatrist had said: “Your daughter needs to be held accountable for her actions, there needs to be consequences for her negative behaviour,” as well as reflecting on my own youth and how becoming involved within the youth justice system opened more doors, more opportunities for help. I can use my daughter’s criminal charges to our, and her, advantage. There was a great mental health facility that can help my daughter, which requires a youth to be involved within the criminal justice system and serving a sentence of six months or longer. So when she came up before the courts once again for a more serious assault upon a group home staff, one that involved pulling out the staff’s hair in chunks and repeatedly kicking her in the stomach and head, I pleaded with the judge on her sentencing day, which came with a court ordered psychological assessment, deeming her as experiencing psychotic tendencies, violent and hostile behaviour as well as extreme anxiety and depression, to give my daughter a lengthy sentence so she can then be referred to this centre. He basically laughed at me, “it goes against my better judgement to sentence your daughter for that length of time, exposed to youth who are far worse off than your daughter is when our city offers plenty of services that are capable of helping your daughter. We have to remember she is 14-years-old, not 40. And to be honest, if it was up to me, we would not have these cages where we house human beings.”
What ever happened to making an individual accountable to their actions? In my perspective, and I’m sure many others would agree, when you do wrong, you are made to be held accountable for the damage you have caused or inflicted. When a toddler does wrong we give them a time out, when a child does wrong they get grounded. When a teenager does wrong we rehabilitate them? Refer the youth to a system of services that are, in my experience, inadequate, especially within our city and thus failing them. My daughter knows she can now cause damage to a building and not be held accountable, my daughter now knows she can brutally assault a person and get probation. I don’t know what the hell the purpose of probation is either. When I was young we had curfews to abide by, we had stipulations to not possess or consume alcohol or drugs. My daughter has admitted to her probation officer she is injecting drugs, staying out all night from her group home and nothing happens to her, no consequence. On one such night where she left the group home, she met with a man she barely knew, who sexually assaulted her. I found out two days after the fact that she had showed up at family friend’s with no pants, no shoes and no socks on at 4 am where they gave her clothing and then returned her to the group home. I was (expletive) livid, my blood boiled and my frustration with this system, said to support my daughter, was failing miserably.
I sat with my daughter in the sexual assault crisis unit at the hospital, wondering how we got to this point. Questioning the effectiveness of this system said to help and support our youth, my daughter. I relinquished full time responsibility as her mother because I was given an ultimatum to choose between my children, but also in hopes of helping my daughter to access the services she so desperately needs.
My daughter lives with mental health issues, yes, she also finds herself before the youth criminal justice system. And both systems keep bouncing her back and forth, mental health deems her issues as behavioural, and thus they become a criminal justice matter, the criminal justice system deems her behaviour as mental health related and pushes her back unto the mental health system.
I am now at point of frustration beyond measure; my daughter is slipping through every small crack within this system. I’m demanding accountability.
