B.C. needs new mental health hospital, psychiatrist tells inquest into family’s death

A psychiatrist told an inquest B.C. needs a new mental health hospital, after a Prince Rupert man suspected of killing his family was released days before their deaths.

A psychiatrist with British Columbia’s Northern Health authority has called for a new mental health hospital in B.C. in her testimony to an inquest into the deaths of a Prince Rupert family.

The coroner’s inquest has heard that Christopher Duong was suspected by police to have killed his wife Janet Nguyen, their two young sons and then himself on June 13, 2023, three days after he was detained under the Mental Health Act but then released a few hours later.

Dr. Barbara Kane was asked on Friday if resources at Prince Rupert Regional Hospital, where Duong was assessed, could have influenced the decision to release him, with inquest counsel Steven Liu saying the hearing had heard that the locked detention room at the hospital was “akin to torture.”

Liu questioned whether keeping someone under such conditions could damage a doctor-patient relationship, noting that the doctor who released Duong was also his long-term family physician. Kane said that was a judgment call and was “not easy.”

She said there was nowhere for general purpose hospitals in the north to send potentially “dangerous” people with severe, ongoing mental illness.

“They used to go to Riverview,” she said, referring to the psychiatric hospital in Coquitlam. B.C., that was closed in 2012. “We don’t have that anymore. So, they stay with us and it backs up the whole system.”

She said the difficulty transferring people meant she was “pretty sure that there are people who get discharged before they should. Because we don’t have the right services.“

The hearing in Burnaby, B.C., has heard that Duong was released after an assessment by a doctor at Prince Rupert Regional Hospital who was also his longtime family physician, and who found him to be “friendly and calm” at the time.