Ashley Smith, a troubled teenager that was incarcerate at the fragile age of 15 for throwing crab apples at a postman, died almost 5 years ago due to choking on a piece of cloth in her cell at the Grand Valley Institution for Women in Kitchener, Ont. The authorities at that moment had believed her death to be accidental, and the case was dismissed as such. 5 years later, the case is being reexamined for the lack of consideration for Smith’s mental health and the leading authority behind this cause is Dr. John Carlisle. She had to endure forced medication, isolation, and 17 transfers from one prison to the next.

“The frequent and repeated transfers may have served to deprive Ashley of what appeared to be an initial willingness to develop therapeutic alliances,” Carlisle said. This among other things is a very frequent and common systematic behaviour in regards to inmates, personal considerations in regards to an inmate’s psyche is highly negligible, which leads to outbursts of self-harm episodes as indicative by this case. The premise of this inquest is to efficiently pinpoint and deduce the causes of these deep rooted problems within the long-term confinement system.

Approaches such as behavioural analysis of the staff towards the inmates, their behavior amongst each other would further explain the causation of such issues. Currently, the cumulative stand is immensely in favour of limiting transfers of inmates/patients that are known to be dealing with repeated episodes of self-harm, as well as for authorities and staff that directly interact with such individuals to have a much more approachable demeanor as well as an efficient yet systematic methodology in regards to dealing with inmates/patients problems/ requests.

 

Treatment within facilities is minuscule, as so is the ability to handle mental health issues by the staff. Recent studies of federal inmates show, only about 48 percent with a major mental disorder actually reported their symptoms to a physician. The matter of fact is that there is a limited amount of awareness and information being distributed and exposed to the general public, as such there is a very minute portion of the community that discusses such topics and prepares contingency and preventative programs in regards to mental health. This simply is not an acceptable approach in regards to dealing with mental health. Mental health disorders are on the rise and this issue must be brought into the light for a better and healthier Canada.

 

By Ahmad Khan

 

http://www.ontario.cmha.ca/justice.asp

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ story/2012/09/25/toronto-ashley-smith-inquest.html