Li bound for top-security home

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This article was published 06/03/2009 (6061 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A private room in the four-bed high-security unit at Selkirk Mental Health Centre is expected to be Vincent Li’s new home.

The high-security area is part of the facility’s 18-bed forensic unit. Everybody there has been found by a judge to be not criminally responsible (NCR), including people who committed crimes while experiencing psychotic episodes from untreated mental illness.

Ken Nattrass, CEO of Selkirk Mental Health Centre, said the high-risk area houses patients deemed a risk to themselves or others.

He said the facility’s forensic unit has a robust "security envelope" — visitors must walk through a series of two locked doors that close behind them before they enter the visitors’ area. Another locked door encapsulates the medium-security area, which houses 14 patients deemed NCR by the courts.

The high-security area, where Li will likely reside, is separated by a fourth set of locked doors.

Inside, four rooms are connected to a hallway leading to a washroom and private TV room. Nattrass said patients aren’t locked in their rooms, but are monitored by security cameras, and are steps away from a nursing station.

A private seclusion room with a mattress inside is also available should staff think a patient is a danger to himself or others.

Nattrass said all patients receive individualized treatment plans, which range from medication and illness education to anger management and regular visits with psychiatrists and other therapists.

The goal is for patients to graduate from the high-risk unit to the medium-security unit to the rehabilitation wing, and eventually, back into the community. Patients have the opportunity to take university courses or obtain their high-school equivalent.

Nattrass said the process is gradual, and patients who stabilize can move to rehabilitation wards and obtain grounds and pass privileges with family.

"We don’t discharge people abruptly from the locked unit to the community," Nattrass said. "This is something that happens very gradually over time, depending on the recovery and stability of the individual."

"If (Li) does come to Selkirk Mental Health Centre, he would almost certainly begin his stay here in the high-security area."

Chris Summerville, executive director of the Manitoba Schizophrenia Society, said a psychiatric facility is the best place for Li to receive the treatment he needs in order to recover.

The NCR ruling incited uproar from Tim McLean’s family, who have advocated that federal laws be changed and Li be locked up forever.

Summerville said Li’s illness is treatable and there’s no reason he should be locked up for the rest of his life. He said McLean was the victim of a horrible crime, but Li was a victim too — of an untreated illness.

He said it’s important the public know schizophrenia is treatable. He said McLean’s death is a tragic example of the need for more mental health education and services. Summerville said locking up mentally ill patients forever reverts back to the dark ages, when patients were subject to barbaric treatments and had no hope of recovery.

"(Vince Li) was a victim of schizophrenia and it’s the schizophrenia that did this," Summerville said.

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"What this case says to us is once again we need a national mental health strategy that addresses the inadequate and lack of mental health services for people. There’s long wait times and for example, in Ontario, he walked out of a hospital."

Selkirk Mental Health Centre opened in 1886.

Natrass said it was only the early 1950s that saw the advent of modern anti-depressants and mood stabilizers that gave patients suffering from severe depression or schizophrenia a chance.

Nattrass said 27 of Selkirk’s 252 patients are hospitalized because of a court ruling, including the 18 in the forensic unit and nine others who have graduated to another rehabilitation wing.

jen.skerritt@freepress.mb.ca