Eyes planted in the camera, Steve Gagnon delivers a dark and hallucinated diagnosis on the state of society. “Serious, there, serious, there… the world, there… sore, sore, sore, sore in their heads in tabarnak, there…”, he mumbles, tapping his own temple.
It was a few days before the 38-year-old man took the wheel of his pickup truck to randomly rush people out to enjoy a sunny Monday afternoon in downtown Amqui.
In his last video, released the day of the tragedy, Steeve Gagnon is delirious about cocaine, cartels and Chinese police stations. “When I started opening the door on Facebook, it messed up their business…”
I am not a psychiatrist. Even if I were, I couldn’t conclude anything from these videos. Only an in-person assessment will establish a diagnosis of Steve Gagnon’s state of mental health.
All I can say, after listening to his rambling remarks, is that he did not seem very well, a few hours before committing the irreparable. To use his own words, he seemed to have sores in his head.
All right, we have to wait for the trial. Above all, do not jump to conclusions too quickly. But the question of mental health inevitably arises. With all the more acuteness as it is the second time in two months.
We hadn’t finished drying our tears for Laval when we started crying again for Amqui. In both places, lives cut at random. Those of toddlers. those of retirees. What cruelty.
It’s so horrible that we’re desperately looking for an explanation. Who would kill innocent people? A little girl who had her life ahead of her? A sweet grandfather who loved to dance? In either case, we tell ourselves that it does not make sense. We think it’s pure madness.
However, most of the time, this is not the case.
In the United States, studies show a weak link between mass killings and serious mental illnesses, such as psychoses.
After analyzing 1,315 killings, researchers from the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University noted psychotic symptoms in only 11% of the killers.1. Among those who had used something other than a firearm, such as a knife or a vehicle, 18% showed these symptoms.
It happens, so. But not very often. The danger is that these tragedies lead the public to believe that anyone diagnosed with a serious mental illness poses a threat to public safety.
In reality, the vast majority of these people are absolutely not violent and above all do not have to pay for the acts perpetrated by a minority.
Many experts were also startled on Tuesday when the Minister of Public Security, François Bonnardel, suggested that people with serious and diagnosed mental illness could be deprived of their driving licenses.
Suggesting that was a bit like suggesting arming teachers or reducing the number of doors to limit killings in American schools. Minister Bonnardel was clearly on the wrong target. Fortunately, he quickly backed off.
Imagine depriving someone of their driver’s license because they suffer from schizophrenia. To deprive her of her autonomy, of her work perhaps, of her social ties… that would be deeply unfair and discriminatory.
The solution, the real one, is to better care for those who suffer. For this, teams specialized in psychiatry must be given the means to do so.
A report fromInvestigationat Radio-Canada, looked Thursday at crimes committed in the past year in Quebec by people with psychiatric disorders2. Several of them had been reported before taking action.
This is the case of Kim Lebel, who killed a man with an iron bar in Quebec City in April 2022. Two days before the murder, his worried parents had contacted the police, hoping to have him committed to a psychiatric center. In vain.
In August 2022, Abdullah Shaikh randomly killed three people on the streets of Montreal and Laval, before being shot dead in a motel. The man suffered from schizophrenia, but the hospital let him go.
It must be said that psychiatrists are under intense pressure to free up beds. “There are managers who say, ‘How much time off are you going to give today?’ Sometimes, we give leave and then we are worried, ”says psychiatrist Marie-Frédérique Allard in the report ofInvestigation.
PHOTO EDOUARD PLANTE-FRÉCHETTE, THE PRESS
The Premier of Quebec, François Legault, went Thursday to the scene of the tragedy, in Amqui.
There were other tragedies. In October, an octogenarian stabbed in her residence for seniors in Montreal. In February, the Laval daycare. And now, Amqui. “It’s true in Quebec and it’s true elsewhere in the world: there are more and more of these kinds of acts [à la suite de] mental health problems, ”acknowledged François Legault, Thursday, in the small town of Bas-Saint-Laurent.
The Prime Minister has promised to invest in mental health in the budget that will be tabled next week. It is high time.
No one wants a return to the days when insane people were locked up in asylums for the rest of their lives. But no one wants more of a society that throws people who are potentially dangerous – for themselves or for others – onto the streets.