Theresa Highers is a mother, a wife, a sister, aunt and grandma, and her family says if a Fredericton hospital hadn’t ignored her pleas to stay in treatment, she wouldn’t be where she is now: in a medically induced coma.

For more than a decade, the 56-year-old woman from Minto, N.B., has received treatment for clinical depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, and last week she went to Dr. Everett Chalmers Regional Hospital asking for help.

It’s something she has done before.

“We always told her that's a safe place to go, that's who can help her,” said her daughter, Julie Highers.

Highers says her mother was placed under a 72-hour psychiatric hold, but as her observation period was nearing its end, Theresa told family and doctors she was not well enough to leave.

“She begged to stay. How do you refuse treatment?” Highers said.

According to the family, the hospital told Theresa she would be discharged despite her concerns.

The family also says the hospital told Theresa her relatives would be contacted to pick her up.

Highers says the call never came, so Theresa’s husband phoned the hospital back.

“They said ‘Oh no, your wife is gone, she has been discharged,’” she said.

With no sign of Theresa, the family began searching.

During that time, Highers says her mother returned to the hospital to pick up medications she had forfeited before being admitted.

“All five bottles. All full. My mom left the hospital again,” she said.

Early Friday morning, a call came in from police: Theresa had been found.

She was discovered unconscious in a Fredericton park and was rushed back to hospital.

“So my mom spent 14 hours alone, depressed, feeling hopeless and lost and all they had to do is call us to come and get her,” Highers said.

Theresa has been in a medically induced coma ever since, and as of Wednesday she was teetering on edge of organ failure.

“Her lungs — she has aspirated back into them and did major damage,” Highers said.

New Brunswick’s Horizon Health Network says they’re aware of the situation, but declined to comment further, citing privacy concerns.

The hospital confirms an internal investigation is underway.

While her family waits to see if Theresa will ever wake up, Theresa says she’s speaking out on behalf of people like her mother, who can’t.

“They're not just a bag of garbage you drop off the side of the road. They have family. They have loved ones.”

With files from CTV Atlantic’s Nick Moore