A new mental health unit at the Labrador Health Centre is Happy Valley-Goose Bay has yet to open, leaving one local mental health advocate furious.
The six-bed mental health unit has been built after a tender for construction a few years ago, but remains unopened. A statement from Newfoundland and Labrador Health Services says they’re still recruiting staff, and they intend to open in mid-November.
Even if it does open around then, Keith Fitzpatrick of Labrador West says six beds isn’t nearly enough.
“It’s a Band-Aid to cover an amputation,” Fitzpatrick told CBC Radio Wednesday.
“People are dying because access to mental health care is non-existent in Labrador. Even six beds, it’s kind of a joke … I can fill six beds walking out my front door in my area of Labrador West.”
CBC News asked N.L. Health Services for an interview, and was told a spokesperson would be available next week.
Labrador is without with a detox or rehabilitation centre, which Fitzpatrick said really only leaves short-term, acute-care beds for people experiencing mental health crises.
While the unit has remained closed, Fitzpatrick says he learned through an access to information request that hundreds of Labradorians have called the N.L. Health Services’ mobile crisis unit for mental health-related issues.
“If you’ve got hundreds of people using a mobile crisis unit for mental health, I don’t think six beds are going to be enough to cover all of Labrador,” he said.
Whenever the facility does open, Fitzpatrick hopes it will include harm reduction programming and peer support measures — something he says has been key in his own journey of recovery.
“It’s fine to have mental health and addiction workers there, because they’re great people. They’ve got the book learning … they don’t have the lived experience. It’s one thing for you to tell me what addiction is, it’s another thing if you’ve actually lived that life and you’re here to tell [me] ‘I got through it, you can too,” he said.
Fitzpatrick hopes the unit is a first step in more mental health-care support for Labrador.
“Anything at this point is a bonus over the nothing that’s almost here now,” he said.
“We have a major addictions problem. All the focus is of course on the St. John’s area for addictions, but in Labrador it’s pronounced. It’s huge, it’s just not talked about. And with no facility here, no detox and no provincial rehab facilities, it’s kind of left aside.”
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