As calls double, some MLAs say P.E.I.'s mobile mental health service is 'dangerously ineffective'

Calls to P.E.I.'s mobile mental health service have doubled over the past two years, and politicians and Island EMS officials alike say too many of those pleas for help are still going to police rather than to people trained to respond to those in crisis. 

"I can think of two examples off the top of my head where a mobile mental health unit should have been dispatched and weren't — and people died as a result," Green Party Leader Karla Bernard said Wednesday at a meeting of the province's standing committee on health and wellness. 

Family members called police multiple times in January before Tyler Knockwood died by suicide, but a mobile mental health unit was never deployed.

Knockwood's wife told CBC News that police came to their home three times the day before he died because his mental health was deteriorating. She said she wanted them to take him to hospital to be assessed and treated by mental health professionals.

Instead, she said, officers took Knockwood from the house after their third visit and dropped him off in downtown Charlottetown near the historic seat of the P.E.I. Legislative Assembly, where he had been working. His body was found there on Jan. 17.

Committee members said that is precisely the sort of situation those mobile units were designed to address.

Launched two years ago, P.E.I.'s Mobile Mental Health Response Service is supposed to triage cases and send trained mental health professionals to respond to crises where they are needed.

But officials with Island EMS, the company that operates the service, told MLAs Wednesday that there has been a lack of co-ordination with police, who continue to respond to mental health calls on their own, rather than refer them to the new service. 

Matthew Spidel, Island EMS's regional director, said many people in mental distress end up calling police directly instead of 911 or the mobile mental health line. 

That phone line, 1-833-553-6983, is staffed from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily.

"What we've offered is that if you receive a call, you can flip it to our line," Spidel told the committee meeting. "Please. Like, we are here to support you and the folks at need." 

Island EMS had another suggestion that would address the root of the problem: Route all emergency calls in P.E.I. through a single dispatch centre, rather than having forces continue to operate dispatch lines separate from fire and ambulance services.

Charlottetown Police Services told CBC News earlier this year that they received more than 1,900 mental health calls last year, after someone called police with a concern. About 34 per cent of those calls came from the same six people, Chief Brad MacConnell said, but there was also a significant increase in calls from — and about — people in crisis thought to be at risk of harming themselves or others.

At most, the force said, just a few dozen of those calls ended up drawing in the mobile mental health unit.