Mental-health workers kept busy by searing testimony at MMIW inquiry
EDMONTON — As disturbing stories emerge at the national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women, it’s Melodie Casella’s job to ensure that testifying about trauma doesn’t simply create more.
“Our mandate is a no-harm approach,” Casella, health manager for the inquiry, said Wednesday on the second day of hearings in Edmonton.
“It’s families first.”
Casella runs an extensive mental-health network for the inquiry’s western swing. That network embraces witnesses long before they tell their stories to the inquiry’s commissioners.