TORONTO — A patient in Alberta waited 16 days in an emergency department for a psychiatric hospital admission last year. Another in British Columbia waited just over nine days. These cases are extreme outliers, but mental health experts say they illuminate a worsening crisis inside of fluorescent-lit emergency rooms across the country — psychiatric patients wait far longer for an in-patient bed than other people.
In Alberta, for instance, patients on average waited more than 33 hours for a bed in a psychiatric unit last year, Recovery Alberta said — 24 hours longer than the overall average of about nine hours. Quebec psychiatric patients, similarly, spent 33 hours and 39 minutes on average in the emergency department waiting for a psychiatric bed, the province’s Ministry of Health says, almost 10 hours longer than the average patient’s 24-hour wait for a hospital admission. This disparity in wait time has been the case for decades, experts say, and it’s only getting worse as demand outpaces funding across the spectrum of mental health care.
Research shows the emergency department environment’s near-constant noise, lights that never dim, and turbulent atmosphere can be harmful to a person in a mental health crisis, cause them to deteriorate and lead to a longer hospital stay. “That chaotic, noisy environment, it’s not therapeutic, (it) has a real meaningful impact on our patients as they wait,” said Alberta Psychiatric Association President Dr. WAITS BY PROVINCE After a health provider determines a patient needs a psychiatric ward admission, they remain in the emergency department while waiting for a bed to become available.
That includes ensuring there’s enough staff in the ward to care for the new transfer. Until then, they are monitored and treated in the ER. A patient at risk of harming themself or others can be taken to a seclusion room in the ER, which can be monitored by security, with padded walls, a door that locks from the outside, and in some cases, no windows.
A Vancouver woman who says she was locked in a seclusion room several times between 1992 and 2015 recalls the environment aggravating her paranoia and hallucinations. She can still remember the room vividly — not much bigger than a stretcher, she says, no door handle or light switch, a mattress on the floor and a steel toilet in the corner. “That was the most confining, horri…
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