B.C. youth still waiting too long for help three years after boy’s suicide: rep
VICTORIA — The lack of timely mental health services contributed to the suicide of a 16-year-old boy who wasn’t eating, had threatened to kill himself and was left to roam in and out of school, British Columbia’s representative for children and youth says.
Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond said Thursday the First Nations teen, described by teachers as sweet and easy to like, left school one morning in May 2013, walked into a nearby forest in an undisclosed urban community and took his own life.
She blamed “a stunning lack of leadership” in the Children’s Ministry for a crisis involving excessive wait times for mentally ill aboriginal youth, saying nothing has changed since the death of the teen dubbed Chester, to protect his identity.
Aboriginal youth exhibiting mental health issues still wait an average of 270 days for service in the area where Chester lived, Turpel-Lafond said Thursday after releasing a scathing report that criticized the “balkanized” and “grotesquely understaffed and underfunded” Children’s Ministry.