Suicidal man got on QEII roof after long ER wait, mother says

Rachel Jones wonders how much longer she and her son would have waited in a Halifax emergency room if he hadn't escaped and tried to kill himself. 

Jones took her 24 year-old son to the Queen Elizabeth II Health Sciences Centre last month because he was depressed, manic and suicidal.

CBC News is not naming Jones's son, but his mother is speaking on his behalf while he recovers.

When they arrived at the hospital, Jones said she told triage nurses her son talked about killing himself by jumping off a building.

"I assumed that would be straight [forward]," Jones said in an interview. "Show the doctor and then send it off to the psych team so that he doesn't sit and wait in the waiting room with people."

That wasn't the case. They sat in the waiting room for more than seven hours, Jones said, before her son asked to go to the bathroom. 

When he was out of his mother's sight he found an unlocked door and eventually made his way to the roof.

Security found Jones's son, handcuffed him and put him in an interrogation room where he was held for several more hours.

He didn't see a psychiatrist until about 18 hours after they first arrived at the hospital, Jones said.

"I don't know quite why we had to wait that long ... I could have lost my son and [so would have] his siblings and his father," she said. "I don't know how we would have recovered."

Jones, who has worked as a registered nurse since 1994, said she's not blaming the staff.

Her problem, she said, is with the process.

An emergency department physician assesses a patient experiencing a mental health crisis and then decides whether they need to see a crisis-response clinician or a member of the psychiatry team, according to Nova Scotia Health.

Jones said the physicians are so busy that a nurse or other medical health professional should be able to make referrals to the psychiatric team to help people to access care quicker.