Unmet mental health needs a 'public health emergency': mass shooting inquiry

In its final report released Thursday, the commissioners with the federal/provincial inquiry examining the 2020 Nova Scotia mass shooting say those affected by the tragedy are still suffering after efforts to address their mental health needs fell short.

"The grief, loss, and trauma caused by the mass casualty and the response to it continues to cause harm to a great many,” wrote the commissioners.

“The province of Nova Scotia has not fully met the needs of the communities most affected by the April 2020 mass casualty, resulting in a health deficit and public health emergency.”

While the inquiry found various public health departments, such as Nova Scotia Victims Services and N.S. Health Mental Health and Addictions, did offer services following the tragedy, the commissioners also concluded those services were disjointed and “did not fully meet the support needs following the April 2020 mass casualty.”

But, the commission could not say to what extent those needs remained unmet, because the province did not do a needs assessment.

Registered counselling therapist Margaret Mauger says she’s not surprised by the findings.

Immediately after the tragedy, she says calls flooded into her service, the After Trauma Empowerment Network (ATEN), based in Shubenacadie, N.S.

She started out that January offering free counselling two days a week, but after the shootings, Mauger says the demand was so high she was doing it four days a week.

“Because also COVID was going on, and people were very isolated, scared, it traumatized our province, really,” she says.

Almost three years after the tragedy, she says wait times for publicly-funded mental health care remain unacceptable.

“To be told, you have to wait six months or a year,” she says.” [That’s] not okay, it does not work.”

The inquiry’s final report highlights those gaps, after conversations with family members, survivors, and first responders.

Many told the inquiry how frustrating it was trying to access overburdened and uncoordinated mental health-care services.

“Victim services needs more funding. They need better partnerships with psychologists and psychiatrists and the ability to bring a crisis team who have the ability, the experience to deal with mass casualty situations,” Darcy Dobson, daughter of victim Heather O’Brien, told the commissioners.

“You never expect a mass casualty to happen but it does. We’re living proof that there was nobody who knew how to handle the mass of mental health issues that came with it.”

For many, those issues have persisted in the ensuing years. Portapique survivor Leon Joudrey told CTV News last October he was among those who “fell through the cracks in the mental health system,” waiting months for follow-up care.

Joudrey died suddenly at his Portapique home, a place he said haunted him, less than a week later. Police said his death was not suspicious.

As a result of its findings, the commission’s final report includes a recommendation that the federal and provincial governments fund a program for immediate and long-term mental health support in Colchester, Cumberland, and Hants counties -- areas directly touched by the tragedy.

The commission recommends that happen in less than a month, by May 1.

Monday, the province’s minister for the Office of Mental Health and Addictions said the department is still reviewing all the recommendations.

“I definitely understand the urgency within the community,” said Brian Comer.

But Comer had few specifics to share, only saying more details would come later.

“I'm certainly dedicated, committed to doing the work that is necessary to make things better for those people in the community. So I’m certainly going to work very hard on this file,” he added.

The commission has also called for better funding for mental health care in the province overall, calling on government to “establish a comprehensive and adequately funded model of mental health care.”

That model, wrote the commissioners, could be subsidized by Ottawa, calculated as an offset of the cost of responding to mental health calls currently borne by police services. The report cites a 2020 review that found RCMP officers in Colchester County spent 10 per cent of their available time that year responding to mental health crisis calls.

Mauger hopes the commission’s recommendations become reality.

“[They’re] very desperately needed,” she says. “And I would like to add not just in those three counties ... but the entire province.”