B.C.’s mental health detention system violates charter rights: report
VANCOUVER — British Columbia needs to overhaul a mental health system that allows psychiatric facilities to detain people with little justification, to deny them access to a lawyer and to take away their personal clothing as a form of punishment, a legal advocacy group says.
The Community Legal Assistance Society published a report titled “Operating in Darkness” on Wednesday, which describes B.C.’s mental health detention regime as one of the most regressive in Canada.
The report says the province’s Mental Health Act allows people in care to be put in solitary confinement, strapped to a bed or given involuntary treatments like drugs and electroconvulsive therapy.
Report author Laura Johnston said it is “extremely unusual” for a provincial mental health act in Canada not to prohibit the discipline of patients who are being held without consent.