There is a significant shortage of psychiatrists in Laval, which has “major” repercussions for patient care and safety. This is what coroner Géhane Kamel heard on Wednesday while she chairs the investigation into a young schizophrenic man who randomly shot three people in 2022 in Montreal and Laval.
These three men were shot and killed in less than 48 hours, on August 2 and 3, 2022. The shooter, Abdulla Shaikh, was shot dead the next day by the police during an intervention by the Tactical Group of the city’s police department. de Montréal (SPVM) in a room of the motel where he was hiding.
Aged 26 when he died, Shaikh had been diagnosed with schizophrenia a few years before. He had spent time in psychiatry. Found not criminally responsible for a crime with which he had been accused, the young man was released from the psychiatric hospital in April 2021 by the Mental Disorders Review Commission, even though it considered that he still presented, in because of his mental state, “a significant risk to public safety”.
This decision of the Commission was confirmed by the Administrative Tribunal of Quebec in April 2022, just a few months before the triple homicide.
On Wednesday, the psychiatric care offered in Laval was discussed during the coroner’s public inquiry.
Multiple alarms sounded
A letter from psychiatrist Simon Roussel, dated August 4, 2022, and addressed to his superiors at the CISSS de Laval, was discussed. The triple homicide that had just occurred, and other recent cases he witnessed, prompted him to warn his bosses of the current risks, he wrote.
“In my opinion, these incidents are largely the result of a lack of adequate external follow-up, due to a major shortage of psychiatrists. »
Abdulla Shaikh was one of these outpatients in Laval.
In June 2023, the situation did not seem to have improved while three psychiatrists from the psychiatry department of the CISSS de Laval, with the support of their head of department, Fouad Saher, wrote directly to the minister responsible for Social Services, Lionel Carmant, to sound the alarm.
They say they want to notify him of a “critical medical workforce situation” within the CISSS de Laval in psychiatry. “The repercussions are major for patient care and safety. »
If there are supposed to be 60 psychiatrists to properly serve a population the size of the city of Laval, there are only 18, including 4 with reduced tasks, they write.
Laval is at the bottom of the list of ratios of psychiatrists per 100,000 inhabitants, the only region in a worse position being Nord-du-Québec, they point out in their missive, filed as evidence at the coroner’s inquest. .
The Dr Alain Turcotte, who until recently was the Director of Professional Services at the CISSS de Laval, did not sign this letter but affirmed before the coroner that he agreed with its content “With all of the work,” he confirmed.
The signatories of the letter also report that many psychiatric patients are hospitalized in regular units, because psychiatric hospitalization units regularly overflow in the Laval region. And since psychiatrists are overloaded – and exhausted – with hospitalizations, the care of patients in the clinic is affected, and their follow-up “is also compromised”.
The Dr Turcotte said he was very critical of the Ministry of Health. He fears that Laval will not be able to fill its vacant positions for psychiatrists, particularly due to the lack of graduates in Quebec in this specialty. He believes that there should be an annual review of troops in the Quebec health network.
Claiming to be looking for solutions, the psychiatrists particularly invite the minister to help them with recruitment and offer certain suggestions.