While much of the recent political focus in the wake of a mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge, B.C., has been on the role of OpenAI and its willingness to flag the shooter’s account to police, people who knew the family have brought up another concern: access to mental health care.
Eight people were killed in the tragedy, including the shooter’s mother. The shooter also died of self-inflicted wounds.
RCMP in Tumbler Ridge say they had a history of calls to the residence and that the 18-year-old perpetrator had previously been apprehended by police under the Mental Health Act and taken to hospital for assessment.
In a statement shared to the Globe and Mail, the shooter’s grandparents said the family had tried unsuccessfully to get help for a variety of mental health concerns.
The mother of a girl still in hospital told reporters she knew the shooter’s mother and her struggle to get support and adequate care in the small community of just over 2,000.
“It’s about mental health. It’s about a lack of resources,” she told reporters.
Questions arise about mental health supports in small B.C. communities after Tumbler Ridge tragedy
While the investigation into the case is still underway, gaps in mental health care have long been a matter of concern in rural and northern B.C, which has fewer supports per capita than more urban parts of the province in a region separated by vast geography.
A coroner’s inquest has been announced for Tumbler Ridge to provide a fact-finding mission into the factors that may have led to the shooting, including access to mental health care.
But a separate coroner’s inquest, whose results were announced the same day as the shooting in Tumbler Ridge, has pointed to gaps in how B.C.’s mental health and policing services interact with each other and the impacts on those who need help.
The Prince Rupert case focused on the events leading up to June 13, 2023, when 38-year-old Christopher Duong of Prince Rupert was found dead of self-inflicted wounds alongside the bodies of his two young children and their mother.
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The inquest heard Duong had been taken to hospital by RCMP under the Mental Health Act a few days earlier, but was released just hours later with no concrete plan for followup care.
It also heard that after his release, Duong’s father had sounded the alarm about his son’s erratic and paranoid behaviour and that the services in the community were inadequate to deal with more serious mental health matters.
“It’s not just a northern thing, it’s an all of B.C. thing,” said Dr. Barbara Kane, the head of the psychiatric ward at the University Hospital of Northern B.C. in Prince George.
Kane provided testimony at the coroner’s inquest into the events in Prince Rupert and said she is glad a similar fact-finding exercise will be held for Tumbler Ridge.
“They need to hear how limited some of the services are for people with mental health problems,” she said.
The Canadian Mental Health Association warns against automatically connecting mental health to violence, pointing out that “most people living with mental health challenges are rarely violent and are, in fact, far more likely to be victims of violence themselves.”
But Jonny Morris, CEO of the association’s B.C. division, says it’s important for the public and policymakers to learn all they can from the tragedies in an effort to prevent them from repeating. He expects access to care, particularly in northern and rural communities, will once again be highlighted as an area of concern.
“The availability of mental health care in this province can absolutely depend on where you live,” he said. The organization wants baseline standards of care across the province, with support teams as close to as many communities as possible, supplemented by virtual care and visiting psychiatrists.
That need for local assistance is top of mind for Timothy and Bekka Favelle, parents in Tumbler Ridge who travel more than 1,200 kilometres to Vancouver to access an in-person psychologist for one of their children.
“We have even fewer mental health professionals than we do doctors,” said Bekka Favelle in an interview from Tumbler Ridge. “So how do you access meaningful care?”
In the 2024 provincial election campaign, the B.C. NDP promised a mental health counsellor in every school.
But to date, no timeline for that campaign promise has been announced.
Still, Carole Gordon of the B.C. Teachers’ Federation says a new four-year contract just ratified with the province will improve the ratio of 693 students for every one counsellor now to 513 students per counsellor in the next four years.
“It’s a step in the right direction,” she said.
Jameel Aziz, superintendent of Prince George School District 57, said schools are often the first place where mental health concerns are flagged, but said it can often be difficult to connect with proper care.
“Getting support from our health system is very, very challenging,” he said. “Many people don’t even have family doctors to be able to get that initial referral, so they are forced to go to emergency or a walk-in clinic. So, this is really a much larger societal issue.”
Bekka Favelle said she knows people who are wary of seeking support in part because of fear it will cause more harm than good, especially in areas without trained mental health professionals. She also worries about the stigma associated with seeking care.
Morris said the goal should be to provide sustained, locally accessible services that kick in before a crisis point requiring more dramatic intervention is needed.
And in cases where that intervention is required, argues Kane, there is also a need for improved services. Across northern B.C., she said, there are just three psychiatric units, with six beds in Prince George being the only place equipped for stays of more than a few days.
She’s called for the creation of a dedicated psychiatric hospital in northern B.C. because of what she’s seen practising in the region — people bouncing from family doctors to emergency rooms trying to get help without success.
“The bar is going up,” she said. “People have to be more and more severely ill in order to get into hospital … sometimes they end up in trouble with the law … I’ve let people out who I didn’t think should be let out but we had to because we can’t keep them.”
The coroner’s inquest in Prince Rupert concluded with a series of recommendations aimed at addressing these needs, including expanding the number of hospitals with psychiatric and mental health services.
It also recommended improved communication between police, health workers and the ministry responsible for social services, including protocols to alert police when someone is discharged after being checked into care under the Mental Health Act.
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Premier David Eby says it’s clear community mental health supports must be improved, especially in rural and remote communities, and that’s something he expects to be addressed through the coroner’s inquest, which has been announced but not yet scheduled.
Morris said just as was the case with a report into a mass shooting in Nova Scotia in 2020, he expects the findings underscore the importance of care for people, no matter where they live.
“Mental health care really shouldn’t depend on your post code,” he said.
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