Over the weekend, the province was rocked by a sensational crime, a young man dressed in medieval garb rampaging around Quebec City with a sword on Halloween.
He ended up killing two people and injuring five before being arrested by the police.
Though there are few details available at the moment, Quebec City Police have stated that . . .
the assault was premeditated but not associated with any other terrorist attacks. They have also stated that the suspect had made threats of violence back in 2014, but in a “medical context.”
It’s important to note, as Quebec’s junior health and social services minister Lionel Carmant did on Monday, people with mental health issues or illnesses don’t typically act violently. He steered away from linking the crime to the pandemic in any way, calling it “unpredictable.”
While there’s no value in speculating what might have motivated this young man to do what he did, it’s hard to imagine the chaos and the restrictions of the past few months could be anything but detrimental to anyone’s state of mind. Having businesses closed, routines changed and services shuttered or only available virtually is difficult enough for a healthy person with a stable support system. Take those advantages away and you’ve got a recipe for disaster. A recent survey done by Quebec psychologists found that during the pandemic, 86 per cent of their patients had reported an increase in mental distress and 70 per cent had depressive symptoms.
The CAQ government moved up a funding announcement to Monday that they originally planned to put forward on Nov. 12, committing $100 million towards various mental health initiatives, including $10 million for students in Quebec’s post-secondary system and $19 million for specialized teams to promote early intervention and focus on “vulnerable communities.”
While it’s good to see the government making hard commitments to these kind of initiatives, this is not a new problem. Carament said that there are currently 16,000 Quebecers in line for mental health services.
It’s not hard to see the similarities to shortcomings in other parts of the health care system. The provincial labour shortage certainly isn’t helping things, which is something this region feels even more acutely, due to the brain-drain of being close to a large city and a border with Ontario, where the wages are higher.
Rural areas, where services are already dwindling or hard to access, have been especially hard hit by these labour shortages. If mothers can’t even deliver their babies in the region and residents (myself included) are sitting on a wait list for a family doctor for more than two years, it stands to reason that people with mental illness are going to have a rough go of it.
One one final sobering note, it’s men that we should be paying particular attention to. A study published last month in the Canadian Medical Association Journal found that more than two thirds of gun-related deaths in Ontario over a 14-year span were suicides, occurring predominantly among older men in rural areas. This cohort is largely ignored when it comes to news coverage of gun violence, because homicides and organized crime are better for ratings.
With more darkness and dreary weather on the horizon, it’s more important than ever to check in with your neighbours and loved ones. Social connection and meaningful relationships are some of the best antidotes to depression and while it may take some creativity, both are still possible in this pandemic landscape.
If you or somebody you know is in need of help, dialling 811 and selecting option two will put you in touch with a social worker who can give advice or refer you to other resources. For those in crisis, Quebec’s suicide hotline is 1-866-APPELLE (1-866-277-3553).
Caleb Nickerson
