'We have a problem': Lack of mental health and addiction supports and resources causing major issues in Yorkton

As Saskatchewan’s government touts its record-level funding for mental health and addictions within the province, one area may have been left behind.

Yorkton currently does not have offerings for Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, or a detox centre. The beds within Yorkton’s lone mental health ward – the Pine Unit – have now dwindled to just five, according to local emergency responders and RCMP.

Minister Everett Hindley, who is in charge of Mental Health and Addictions, Seniors and Rural and Remote Health, said that number is at 10 now, but typically the service has 15 beds open.

“Due to staffing challenges related to nurses, they have a number of unfilled positions there related to nurses,” he said on Tuesday.

The loss of the beds, while labeled as a “temporary disruption” by Hindley, has created more than just issues at the facility, which neighbours the Yorkton Regional Health Centre.

CTV News spoke to multiple local responders, RCMP, the City of Yorkton, along with an person directly impacted by a backlog of individuals looking for help who are stuck on wait lists, to better illustrate the growing issue of mental health and addictions on the streets of the community.

FAMILY STRUGGLES FOR HELP

Getting to the street-level and what is happening in Saskatchewan’s rural centres isn’t easy. The stigma attached to drug use and mental health issues is one barrier, but so too is getting help.

A concerned member of the community — who spoke to CTV News on condition of anonymity — said they have been looking for help for a family member for more than six months. After being put on waitlist after waitlist and struggling to find a suitable detox and rehabilitation centre due to high costs, the individual, wrote and reached out to multiple levels of government.

She said they are just on one waitlist now, but the family has contacted 17 centres looking for help. Barriers such as cost, up to $8,000 for a single stay, and the wait lists left her and her family feeling frustrated.

“They all give me the same response, they cannot supply services in the Yorkton region. There's nothing available there,” she said in an interview.

“I think the public needs to start becoming more aware of the fact that there are no services. It's a crisis right now with addictions and mental health, mental health services. There's no place for people to go if you have to travel from rural Saskatchewan to places like Regina or Saskatoon, just to receive services. It becomes an impossible cost to people in the area.”

Another issue, she said, was the lack of a detox centre in the area. That is typically the fist step for many addicts working to get sober and is a pre-requisite at most, if not all rehabilitation centres.

As her family sits and waits for help, she said the problem isn’t going away anytime soon.

“It exists in rural Saskatchewan. It exists in Yorkton, Saskatchewan, and without services, we're going to have people dying for no reason. Young people that have a lot to contribute to society and older people that are hiding their addictions because they know they can't get any help,” she said.

“We don't need any more studies. We know there's a problem. We need direct services implemented.”

EMS RESPONDING TO MULTIPLE CALLS PER DAY

The drug overdose and mental health crisis has created issues within Yorkton’s emergency department, according to Kelly Prime, owner of Crestvue Ambulance.

Prime said Tuesday, typically the first point of contact after a mental health situation or an overdose is the emergency room, filling that bed or department. Patients would then be moved to where a doctor or psychiatrist can see them, deeming whether or not they can be admitted in the facility, or moved to another facility.

In a lot of these cases, Prime said the patients are moved to other facilities with Crestvue going as far as Swift Current in one trip — or offloaded to other agencies where they’re moved to facilities as far away as North Battleford just for care.

To make matters worse, Prime said a lot of the time, these patients are being moved in the middle of the night. With call volumes increasing, it’s caused a need to offset some calls to neighbouring services.

“A lot of times, we're the main car and we're having to travel for hours and hours to take that patient to another facility,” he said.

Prime explained when lockdowns were ongoing during the pandemic, it was quiet. The moment lockdowns lifted, paramedics found themselves in a new world.

“The floodgates were open and we were seeing a tremendous amount of addictions and mental health cases, somebody requests to our services. We were responding to more overdoses and more mental health cases on a daily basis and it's ballooned since then," he said.

"It's grown and grown tremendously over the last couple of years. I've never seen it ever like this. I've never seen this pressure on our system. I've never seen the toll that it has taken on paramedics, nurses, doctors and other healthcare providers. It has completely changed the dynamics of our world."

EMS responds to two to three calls daily, at least, said Prime.

He said if people were on a ride along, they’d likely be surprised with the amount of varying individuals experiencing drug addiction.

CITY OF YORKTON WORKING ON STARTING CONVERSATIONS

Yorkton Mayor Mitch Hippsley sees this issue from two sides, as city mayor and as the chair for a working group of some of Saskatchewan’s big city mayors with Saskatchewan Urban Municipalities Association (SUMA).

He understands what this situation has become within the community of around 22,000.

“What people don't realize is that there's a lot of deaths related to drug addictions. It's quiet stuff that goes on in our city more than people realize,” he said.

“We have a problem. We need more beds and staffing.”

Hippsley said being a small community, Yorkton needs to understand that this problem is here. He said speaking out about it, rather than burying the problem is a main factor in working back from this crisis level problem.

RCMP SEES INCREASE IN FENTANYL, NALOXONE USE CONSISTENT

Local RCMP have a dedicated team for mental health and addictions, called PACT, according to Staff Sgt. Burton Jones, detachment commander for Yorkton RCMP.

He said the team is seeing a lot of illicit drugs on the streets, with drugs like fentanyl, methamphetamine and cocaine as the main driving factors for this issue.

Jones admitted too, that his officers aren’t able to grasp the entire scope of how bad Yorkton’s drug scene is, as the officers only attend in the event that the situation involves criminality of some sort.

“We're only getting kind of, I think the tip of the iceberg, but I think that's even big enough as it is,” he said.

Jones adds that with these added issues in drugs and mental health, it causes more of an issue pertaining to property crime and increased gang activity.

“It's not just the drugs themselves that harm the community. They're one part of it. They are very harmful, but they bring a lot of other things with them that still harm the community,” he said.

Jones said law such as the Good Samaritan Act, which protects people contacting local authorities from charges in the event of an overdose due to the situation becoming a medical issue, help the problem.

Jones believes every officer in his detachment has used and successfully revived someone with the use of Naloxone, or Narcan, a life-saving drug which revives those suffering from overdose symptoms.

“It's very rare that the Naloxone actually expires and we throw it out and have to get new stuff because usually it's utilized so quickly here that we're always constantly buying more,” Jones explained, saying officers carry naloxone at all times in Yorkton on their person.

INCREASED PRESSURES

According to the latest data from the Saskatchewan Coroners Service – which is current up to Oct. 31 – Saskatchewan has experienced 155 confirmed overdose deaths.

That, combined with 200 suspected overdose deaths shows that the crisis is worsening, with the province on track to break the 2021 record of 410 suspected and confirmed overdose deaths.

In Yorkton, Coroners Service records shows two confirmed overdose deaths so for in 2022 for Yorkton, along with six in 2021 and seven in 2020.

For a community the size of Yorkton, those numbers per capita remain significant.

In terms of Yorkton’s Pine Unit, Hindley thanked workers who remained throughout the summer.

“[Staff] that have been there to help work through this situation and to the staff that are involved in the recruitment of getting more health care workers into Yorkton, we're not quite there yet [to fully reopen]. We need to get up to the full operating capacity of having all 15 beds open, but having 10 beds open now, we're definitely heading in the right direction,” Hindley said.

The Minister added that the new Health Human Resources Action Plan, plans to bring more workers to the facility, calling Yorkton a “prime example” of the situation in staffing across the province.

“We know we were seeing increased pressures when it comes to mental health and addictions. It's why you know, we as a provincial governments are investing record amounts into mental health and addiction,” he said.

For people in the situation such as, the anonymous community member and her family, local EMS, Hippsley, RCMP and all those struggling, they may not have the time to wait for another year of record funding and a possible change to the system.

She said it’s time for action, before it’s too late.

“We need to fix things in Saskatchewan. We can't rely on the politicians having personal input or personal problems before they're willing to address the situation. This is a vast problem. It's a critical situation in Saskatchewan. And we need action now,” she said.