N.B. woman recalls how close she came to suicide after ER sent her home without help

WARNING: This story contains details about suicide.

Ashley Chase feels let down by a system that promised to do better after the 2021 suicide of a teenager who'd waited nine hours for mental health help at a Fredericton emergency room.

The same thing happened to Chase in May. Different hospital, same story. 

And were it not for a well-timed phone call from a friend, Chase said, it would have had the same outcome. 

On May 15, she took herself to the Upper River Valley Hospital in Waterville and told them she wanted to die by suicide. 

A kind triage nurse told her she was glad Chase had decided to go to the ER.  

"Any notion of an empathetic and caring experience ended there," Chase said. 

The ER doctor didn't seem to know what to do with her, she said. 

"He told me that I was welcome to sit in the room they had given me until I felt safe enough to drive myself home. And then he asked me what else I had thought they would be able to do for me at the ER."

Chase said she still has a hard time forgiving the doctor. 

"He knew ... I didn't have family with me, I didn't have a friend with me. He let me walk out of there with him as the only person who knew — and he did nothing."

Yet she was more disappointed than surprised, she said, having heard about Lexi Daken's experience.

After waiting for hours for help at the Dr. Everett Chalmers Hospital ER, the Fredericton teen got only a referral for followup care and went home with a sense she'd been a burden. She took her own life.

That night at the ER in Waterville, Chase felt hopeless and went home. She said she Googled "how to tie a hangman's knot."