Coroner Géhane Kamel is concerned about the safety net that really exists for people struggling with serious mental health disorders while psychiatrists testify before her how it is arduous and complex to go to court to order treatment to those who don’t want it.
Psychiatrists testify at the second day of public hearings on the deaths of Sûreté du Québec (SQ) police officer Maureen Breau and the man who fatally attacked her with a knife. Isaac Brouillard Lessard, 35, was shot dead by police shortly after, on April 27, 2023. Four SQ police officers had gone to his accommodation in a rooming house in Louiseville in Mauricie, after he had made death threats to his uncle.
The public inquiry is taking place at the Trois-Rivières courthouse.
On Monday, the life of Isaac Brouillard Lessard was detailed before the coroner, who heard about numerous mental health problems, drug use and years punctuated by violent events and psychiatric hospitalizations.
Tuesday, the first to testify, the Dr Marc Tannous is a psychiatrist who followed Isaac in the Laurentians. He explained that he received a call from Isaac’s mother who said she feared for him because he was becoming more angry and was not maintaining contact with his loved ones. The doctor had learned from his patient that he had also had a violent altercation with the concierge of the building where he lived in Louiseville. On Monday, at the inquest, we learned that he attacked him because there was no more water and that he broke his jaw.
The Dr Tannous explained that Isaac’s mother noted the “first signs of decompensation” but that her options for intervention were limited: this information given by the mother was not enough to “hospitalize him against his will.” » For this, the patient must present “a real and immediate danger”, the legal criterion to be respected. He also had no delegation of powers from the court that would have allowed him to return Isaac to the hospital for treatment.
“There is still a little explosive cocktail”, and a parent raised the red flag, told him the coroner, who notes that the violent attack against the janitor is a “danger. »
Psychiatrists don’t have leverage? the coroner asked him. “Reassure me: there is a safety net for these people? »
A forensic psychiatrist also testified: Doctor Marie-Frédérique Allard had Isaac under her care at the hospital. She said he threatened to strangle her, spat in her face and knocked a desk over her. At that time, he refused any medication because he said it was ruining his life.
The psychiatrist said the legal system “is complex” for people who suffer from mental disorders. “There are delays, it’s tedious, it has holes, flaws.”
Certain requests must be made before the Court of Quebec but others take place in the Superior Court or before the Administrative Tribunal of Quebec (TAQ), she noted.
To intervene in certain cases, the person must be “unfit”, and in others, the person must be “dangerous”. There is no reconciliation between these two criteria, said psychiatrist Allard, expressing that it would perhaps be necessary to bring all of this together in the same place, in a kind of mental health court “to better treat” patients.