Family urges province to heed jury's findings on gaps in system after inquest on mother's suicide

Warning: This story deals with suicide. If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health, you can find resources for help at the bottom of this story.

Angela Arsenault's son and daughter are urging the P.E.I. government to follow through on jury recommendations issued after a coroner's inquest into her death.

The 67-year-old took her own life while she was a patient in the mental health unit at Prince County Hospital in early 2023.

Arsenault's two children say her death was preventable. Over the course of the four-day inquest that ended Friday, Lisa and Derrick Arsenault listened to testimony from others, and themselves spoke about what happened in the lead-up to their mother's death.

"I was really concerned with leaving her on the Island because of the lack of supports — and my fear was true," said Lisa Arsenault, who lives in Ontario.

"The lack of supports and lack of attention to her as an individual, and not just a number in the system, ultimately brought us to where we are today."

Now, they hope that the four recommendations that came out of the coroner's inquest aren't ignored.

"Who is going to follow up? Who is accountable for following up on these pieces?" Lisa Arsenault asked. "That's one of the major pieces for me. Who cares enough to make these things happen for folks?"

Arsenault's children feel their mother was doomed by gaps in P.E.I.'s health-care system. As the inquest heard, the Tignish woman struggled with her mental health throughout her life, and was going through a particularly tough time in the winter of 2023.

Like many Islanders, she didn't have a family doctor or psychiatrist to offer her consistent care.

"There needed to be a change in her medication to help get her through some of this rough stuff she was going through, and she didn't have access to anybody," her daughter said. "So she had to go to an emergency room in order to get access."

After overdosing on medication in an effort to take her own life, Angela Arsenault was involuntarily admitted to Prince County Hospital's mental health unit that February. During a routine check a few days later, staff found her unconscious in her hospital room's bathroom, having hung herself on the shower curtain rod.

"It seemed like it was just a routine inventory, like, 'OK, they're present, check.' Every 15 minutes: 'Present, check,'" said Derrick Arsenault. "But especially in my mom's situation, it has to be more than just a check."

He questions why she wasn't more closely monitored, and how she was able to hang herself.