A young woman from Lower Sackville, N.S. is asking some tough questions following the death of her little brother. She says her pleas for help were ignored by the Mental Health Mobile Crisis Team.

Miranda Norman’s 17-year-old brother Greg was buried on the weekend after taking his own life and she is speaking out about the incident in the hopes of creating change.

She says she called the Mental Health Mobile Crisis Team in the last week of October and expressed concerns about her brother. She was shocked by their response.

“There wasn’t much that they could do, that he’s an average 17-year-old, and that they go through these phases,” recalls Norman. “The lady actually went as far as telling me that 17-year-olds used to go to war.”

Norman says her brother was always ready to help other people – one girl who attended his wake told Norman he had saved her life - but he was emotionally closed off when it came to his own problems and wasn’t willing to accept help.

“I just think that hopefully this opens people’s eyes and something’s done about this before it happens to someone else,” says Kati DeLaurier, a friend of the family. “I wouldn’t wish this on anybody and they’re just the best family and it’s horrible that this happened to them.”

Capital Health representatives say they can’t talk about specific cases due to privacy laws.

The Mental Health Mobile Crisis Team consists of a centre staffed by trained professionals, who take calls from those needing help, and two-person teams that can be sent to deal with urgent cases.

“If somebody is having an acute kind of presentation of a crisis, that we may feel may require additional services, then we’re going to want to be out there,” says Mary Pyche.

The team includes a counsellor and a plain-clothes police officer with mental health training.

“Then the police can bring them against their will to the hospital for the purpose of an assessment,” says Pyche.

A review is conducted whenever questions are raised about the handling of a case.

Norman says she wants to see a more responsive team in place to prevent a similar tragedy from happening to another family.

With files from CTV Atlantic's Ron Shaw