Dear Editor... Guest post by Gloria Guest

 *The following blog post addresses a sensitive subject on the issues of mental health that some readers may find triggering. 

On August 13, 2004, a letter to the editor that I wrote was printed in the Edmonton Journal entitled;

Sister’s suicide raised questions about state of mental health care.

I was surprised it was printed, but glad that a tiny sliver of attention had been granted my sister and our family, at last. I even hoped it would somehow make a difference and some other mentally ill person may be saved and their family would be spared the horrific ordeal we had just come through.

In brief words I described some of what we’d gone through over the last ten years, including the lack of communication between the professionals which eventually resulted in a court order not being carried out properly and her being released from hospital. I went on to describe the many other occasions where she was released from the psychiatrist unit despite the fact that they knew she was going home to the exact same circumstances and cycle. Our family was left, for the most part, out of the loop and patient privacy was protected to such an extent that no matter the mental state she was in, she was always made aware of the content of any conversations we had with her psychiatrists, causing a huge dilemma.

My letter went on to say that I knew it was most likely due to a lack of beds that she was released so prematurely and contained questions as to what could be done about that and what I considered the overly extreme protection of patient privacy rights, even when it was to the detriment of the patient. 

Of course, I had many more questions and issues that there was no room to bring up. There was so much more hidden between the lines of what my sister and our family had been through .My sister was chronically depressed and suicidal. She’d been through the emergency wards and psychiatric wards more times than we could remember. Often she was there when we didn’t know, as no one called. 

She eventually did take her life on a beautiful spring day in June of 2004. Although since January of that year, we’d seen a steady decline in her mental and physical well-being, we were all still taken off guard when it happened, as she had always managed a way back. Not this time. 

It’s a surreal feeling when you’ve tried to help someone for so long and held onto hope that maybe someday, something, would change and then just like that….it’s over. I didn’t know what to do with my shock, my anger, my grief or my left-over feelings that I had been her older sister and should have found a way to save her. Perhaps that was a part of writing the letter. All I knew then and know now is that there were more problems than solutions with the system we found ourselves in; that revolving door cycle I mentioned earlier. In learning more about what some of that was like for her later, we even discovered that the parting words of one of the nurses on the psychiatric ward when she left for the last time were, "See you next time Brenda.” 

Those words are a shocking, eye-opening insight into some of the issues. I find the statement beyond callous but most likely said by someone who in fact did believe what she was saying and was so a part of the system that she didn’t even question the effect of such a statement on my sister. Although I’m not saying that it caused her to take her life it had to have confirmed to her that she was caught in a vicious cycle. Stigma does in fact exist within the very mental health system that claims to help. 

After her death, our family also tried without success to gain access to her medical records. Without her spouse’s help that was impossible and her last psychiatrist did not even return a simple courtesy call when I asked if we could have one final family discussion with him about her. In their eyes, it was over and done. Case closed. That is also why I wrote the letter, naming the hospital of which she had so recently been a patient. To her family, this tragedy would never be over. Yes, we’ve moved on and lived our lives these past sixteen years without her and with all of our unanswered questions, and I personally have gone through many years of healing. I’m a far different and better person for going through it. Yet that doesn’t excuse how she or we were treated. Our family needed and deserved more. So do other families.

Over the years, in the midst of my own growth, I’ve tried to do my small part in sharing my voice, for both Brenda and myself and other families. I don’t feel I’ve been overly successful and often think of whether there is more I can do. Mostly I’ve blogged about her, in a far more personal way than I could share in a letter to an editor. I’ve written a few poems and shared one on one with people about various aspects of walking the hard road of being a survivor of someone who died by suicide or about childhood sexual abuse issues or the many other parts of the web that made up her story. It never really feels like enough on my part. So I look around to what others are doing and yes I do often feel encouraged; the start-up of Survivor of Suicide groups that were barely around when this happened to our family, grief counselling which is now far more understood. I’m encouraged by things I’ve personally learned through research and gifted counsellors such as the effects of early childhood abuse and how that leads to childhood complex trauma, a condition which is becoming far more understood by counsellors trained in therapy to deal with it. 

I’m not sure what my Letter to the Editor would say on the subject of mental health if I wrote one today, but it would still raise many questions and concerns. When I think about the stigma that still surrounds the words suicide, depression or mental illness, I’m not so encouraged. People still back away and you learn not to talk about it. I’ve spoken with enough people over the years to know that it’s not just me seeing this lack of growth. In fact only today I spoke with someone who told me that it’s really not worth asking for a mental health day at work considering the stigma attached. Yes I know people are talking about mental health more these days and it’s all over social media; I’m just not convinced that the stigma has had much of a dent put in it. Maybe someday…..things will be different.

For now, I will keep growing and healing and having my one on one conversations and writing my small blogs and poems. Perhaps with Gods leading I can find more ways to have that voice in a much needed area. I will keep talking about my beautiful sister who fought her battle so hard in the midst of great odds against her. And I will talk about the families left behind.  

The Canada Suicide Prevention Service (CSPS), by Crisis Services Canada enables callers anywhere in Canada to access crisis support by phone in French or English: toll-free 1-833-456-4566 Available 24/7 text 45645 (4 PM - 12 AM ET)