A Kinder, Gentler Emergency Room?

 

Many years ago while we were living in Sudbury Ontario I got a call from a young parent in the congregation who was distressed because early that morning her husband had returned home, soaking wet and shaking with the cold.. He had walked into a nearby lake, recently still frozen, with the intention of taking his own life. He relented, but she was frantic to get him to the hospital for help.

It was Good Friday morning and I was to be involved in the service which was shared by the seven United Church congregations, but I took him to the hospital emergency room where we explained the circumstances. To my dismay nothing happened for the next 90 minutes and he was determined to leave. We watched others show up after him and receive attention because of their physical injuries while he paced. Finally, we left on his promise that he would return later. Both of us attended the Good Friday service, then returned to the hospital where he was eventually seen and admitted. Sad to say, that experience was so upsetting for him that he never forgave me for being part of it. Ministry can be like that sometimes. 

This brought home to me the bizarre priorities of our health care system where those dealing with mental illness are too often ignored or marginalized even though their situations are imminently life-threatening. 

I was heartened to read an article by Erin Anderssen in the Globe and Mail with the headline: One mental health solution: a kinder, gentler emergency department for people considering suicide. Here are a few paragraphs from the piece:

Emergency departments are struggling to find new ways to treat mental-health patients, with a growing recognition that crowded waiting rooms are not the best place for a person struggling with suicidal thoughts or psychosis.But what would a kinder, gentler – and safer – emergency department look like?

A new approach expanding across the United States – and currently proposed by an Ontario hospital hoping to become Canada’s first site – gives the emergency department for mental-health patients a complete open-concept makeover. It has comfortable reclining chairs and soft lighting, even board-game tables, and no locked rooms. More importantly, staff in the unit aim to begin treatment shortly after a person arrives, move patients more quickly out of emergency care and, when discharging, send them home with a planned next appointment. 

That’s a big shift from what typically happens now. People coming to the emergency department with mental-health issues wait roughly twice as long as all visitors to the ED, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information. Families describe sitting in open waiting rooms, their loved ones in obvious distress, sometimes even with injuries from self-harm for everyone to see. Across Canada, police are also responding to more mental-health calls, escorting more people to hospital and waiting longer with them – a presence that can be shaming for patients.

I hope this is one more step amongst many others to change the way we respond to those whose mental distress is real. Not only is this a psychological challenge, it is spiritual as well, and faith communities have often struggled with how to respond with practical compassion.

 I can't recall any discussion or training regarding mental health issues at seminary, yet it was evident almost immediately on arriving at my first pastoral charge in outport Newfoundland that I would be addressing them regularly. Within days of my arrival as a newly ordained pastor a teenager took his own life and I was on scene before ambulance and police because I lived nearby in the community. 

With so many Good Fridays in the lives of those who suffer we can pray for resurrection hope and the necessary changes in community response.