MOOSOMIN - Shattered bodies, minds and souls.
That’s what it has been like for Brenda Johnston and her family for the last six years of their lives.
After losing her both brother and her niece in less than two years from overdose deaths, Johnston is calling for action to support those who are facing ongoing battles of addictions and mental health, in rural areas of Southeast Saskatchewan.
“It didn’t start out this way for my brother. So many people have pre-conceived notions of people with addictions issues and it wasn’t that way for 50 years with him,” said Johnston, who runs Red Market Barn in Kenosee.
Johnston said her brother, Jack, lived a normal life. He was healthy individual, a farmer his whole life and grew up around family members who loved him.
“He was the youngest of the family on a farm, he had three oldest sisters, was kind, considerate. We talked to him every day because we just did, his three sisters,” she said.
“We lost our mom when he would’ve been 20, so he definitely phoned all three sisters every day. He loved to talk on the phone, and was always checking to make sure he was doing things right, or what he was up to, because it was kind of the oil boom as he got older, when he first started. It was a really successful business, lots of physical work and he still farmed with my dad.”
Johnston said during that time, her family experienced the unexpected loss of their sister, which had impacted the family but brought them closer.
“He was really hurt when my mom died and then my sister died quite suddenly in 2000. It was an adult crib death which I never heard of, but once it happens in your family then you start researching. She was 41, and left her three boys behind,” Johnston said.
“You know, everyone suffers from mental health issues, as those things happen in families, but because he did so much physical work on the farm, he cut wood and he did lots of oil field work which was heavy physical work too.”
After decades of working on the farm, Jack was prescribed pain killers to reduce the pain caused from his work of farming.
“He had a bad shoulder like me, and I truly believe his addiction probably started with him being given drugs. Then you get addicted, and you can’t live without them.”
Johnston said throughout the years of him suffering with addiction and mental health issues, her family tried their best to help him, but due to the lack of support in the area, there was only so much she and her family could do for Jack.
“There is just no help, there is no hope. There’s no services in rural Saskatchewan, our only outlet was to go to the RCMP a lot of the time. Some of them would be really good and some wouldn’t,” Johnston said.
“I came from health care initially, I have nurses training and I can’t believe how people get treated. And in small towns it’s probably worse because everyone knows everyone.”
Johnston worked in health care for 20 years, as a nurse in doctors offices, as well as in acute and long term care. Currently, she has been working as an educational assistant and librarian for the past 24 years.
Based on her brother’s experience with addiction and mental health, Johnston said she was shocked to find out the lack of support the systems for people in rural areas.
Asking the government for support
In October 2019, a year after Jack passed from an overdose, Johnston wrote a letter to various government officials.
“The past four years, since October 2015 we have dealt with a family member with mental health issues, diagnosed with drug addiction and bipolar.,” she wrote.
“Four years ago we realized our 47 year old brother had developed a serious drug addiction to crystal meth. Until this time, my brother had lived a meaningful normal life farming, and had several successful oil related businesses over the years.
“He had injured himself and was given a variety of known drugs for pain that may have led to drug abuse. It’s needless to say, it has devastated our whole family.
“We have lived the past four years how no one should have to live. As the addiction progressed and incidents accelerated, we struggled 24 hours a day, every day for four years. Our brother’s health continued to deteriorate physically and mentally.
“There were numerous visits to health care facilities during this time. Episodes of psychosis increased and became more unpredictable and violent. Our 84 year old dad was in constant danger and lived under threats each day as they farmed together and lived in the same yard.
“We spoke with the local RCMP several times requesting help, but until there was an incident, no help was available. They had numerous reports of threats to community members, but no one would press charges.
“My family quickly realized that there was nothing we could do until the addiction caused criminal charges and jail time.
“Several times he was arrested for violent episodes and threats. Several times he was held for 72 hours and then released.
“He was assessed at North Battleford during his first incarceration for only a few days. He was incarcerated several times for various crimes during the four years.”
“The last incarceration being the past year, August 2018- August 2019 for one year. It took over seven months for him to even contact us. Before the addition we spoke daily on the phone or visited. This is why I strongly feel it takes months for many addicts to even function somewhat normally as they did before addiction.”
“He was sent to Pine Lodge to finish his sentence. My sister, niece and I picked him up August 20, 2019 from Pine Lodge. He was very much his old self and had many plans in the days ahead.”
“On that evening, August 20, 2019, he passed away. We are still waiting for the autopsy result.”
Johnston did everything she could, but needed help beyond her control
After she sent a letter to Saskatchewan’s premier and the ministry of health, Johnston said the response she received did not acknowledge how severe Jack’s experience with addiction was.
“I wrote a letter to the government after my brother died, responses were pitiful. They were sorry and stated they were doing so much,” she said.
“I was very hurt and angry from their cold responses that I threw them in the garbage.”
She said she could not believe the way the government handled situations like these.
“So I have addicts incapable of making the right choice, and if they had Alzheimers or dementia, there are supports and help for individuals to be looked after when they are no longer capable, not so much for people with mental health and addiction issues.”
Johnston said families of individuals who are experiencing addiction and mental health issues should have the same access to help for their loved ones, just as families who do, for those experiencing other mental conditions, such as Alzheimer’s.
Throughout the four years Jack suffered from his addiction, Johnston said she and her family could legally not enrol him into rehabilitation programs without his consent.
“The only thing they (the law) can do, unless something criminal actually happens, is the police can charge them to get some help or get them committed, then they can be legally held for 72 hours and that’s it.”
“So he would be taken to a psych centre, a mental health centre and then they would keep them in there, for three days. During their psychotic episodes, there is no help other than the police.”
The options for individuals who want to help a family member or friend who does not realize that he or she needs help, are:
• Contact their family physician
• Contact their mental health clinic
• Call HealthLine at 811; or
• Call 911 if someone is at risk or harming themselves or others
Within those four years of Jack’s episodes and need for help, Johnston followed the system’s public guidelines and it still was not enough to get the help that Jack needed.
She said she took her brother to a psychiatrist a year before his passing, and the doctor disregarded Jack’s need for professional help.
“The last one we went to before my brother went to jail for a year, we went to Weyburn. We met with a psychiatrist and the nurse in the facility and he looks at me and says, there’s nothing wrong with your brother, you just have to tell him no.”
Johnston said during that same week, is when Jack had almost burned down their father’s house, during one of his psychotic episodes. However the police could not arrest him until her father layed charges.
She said her and her family tried everything they could within the four years of Jack’s constant battles with addiction and mental health, but were out of options.
Johnston said the day Jack was released from jail, was the same day he overdosed.
“We picked him up in the morning from Yorkton from a half way house, and he had been in jail for a year but he had so many plans and just everything.”
She said when someone passes away from an overdose, it sometimes takes three to six months for the families to get an autopsy report back.
Mourning the loss of her niece
A year and a half after Johnston’s brother passed away, she experienced the loss of her niece to an overdose.
“My niece died in December of last year during COVID, and she came from Alberta and we got her treatment,” said Johnston.
Johnston’s niece, Emily Bryce passed away at the age of 26.
Johnston said when her niece wanted to get better, they took her to a doctor and had to wait almost nine hours before the doctor assessed her.
After she was eventually admitted, Emily was on the wait list for eight weeks before being placed in a treatment centre in Regina, due to the shortage of space.
“This summer it will be two and a half years since my brother died, and it doesn’t ever leave you. Because you think you should have done more.”
“At least with Emily if I had walked away and not listened to that doctor, and said we would just wait for a phone call, but I have more peace at least with her, because we were able to get her help.”
“She willingly went, and she did not get to the point of where the addictions had destroyed her nearly as bad as my brother.”
After Emily spent a couple of weeks in treatment, she was able to get a home for herself in Regina. Yet, Johnston said there were no follow up programs for her to stay on that path.
“That’s why it takes months to undo all of those things, you have to give your body time to heal,” she said.
“I know she was utilizing homeless shelters and different things because we could contact her sometimes, or we would hear from her sometimes through that.”
“Still ultimately, they found her in the freezing cold, frozen to death in the street.”
“Even with treatment, yes people are going to overdose or do this, but my concern is that more people have died from overdoses because of Covid.,” said Johnston.
“There needs to be indefinite support groups, and part of the problem is that it’s rural. I mean with my niece, she had no car and it’s rural so how does she even get to somewhere for help?”
“There needs to be better support groups, there needs to be caring, feeling, in person I mean all this online stuff, it gets no where. It’s just about driven everyone over the edge with COVID. That’s not the answer. It needs to be more, and yes she did fail but I mean you at least have to try. You might fail, but you at least have to try and I don’t feel like we’re doing that.”
Johnston said the urgency of follow up treatment programs are crucial to helping people who are experiencing mental health and addiction issues.
“My whole point of what my brother went through, cost the government a tenfold of what providing treatment may have cost.”
Overdose deaths have become higher in the province
Unfortunately Johnston’s loss of her two family members connects to a bigger issue across the province.
According to Saskatchewan’s Coroners Service, there were 464 confirmed and suspected overdose deaths in 2021, an immense record.
Since Johnston lost her brother Jack pre-COVID and her expressing her concerns with the government about more support systems needing to be in place to prevent his loss, the number of overdoses skyrocketed during the pandemic.
“I think our society has changed, as society evolves different problems come up and we have to learn to deal with them as they come up.”
Johnston said the stigma behind mental health and addictions, needs to be changed by society as a whole.
“We have to deal with these problems, they’re not going to go away. Unless you have a family member anything regarding addictions, anything is derogatory. They just don’t understand it’s beyond a person's control,” said Johnston.
“I’m advocating for change that families need to get help, that our processes are so long and we can’t wait until they ask for help because that’s probably not going to happen.”
“As a family you should be able to get help and a judge should be able to say, I order you for treatment. Like in all these cases, why did we have to wait for something criminal to happen? Why couldn’t he have been court ordered to go for treatment? But the idea is, unless they want to go it’s not going to happen, but my point is that we at least have to try.”
“I mean we have to change laws and try to get them help but they make it so hard for them to try and get help. The only break we got in those five years, was that year my brother was in jail, mentally for us,” said Johnston.
“We individuals in society at least have to try. At this point this is not happening, we treat all medical conditions but not mental health and addiction issues.”
“If I went to the doctor and said I had cancer I would get treated, if I had a broken leg I would get treated but if it’s mental health and addictions then nothing happens.”
“In rural Saskatchewan there really isn’t anything, you can go to an AA meeting for support, but that’s it. Any type of mental health, it’s so lacking. I think you can see mental health counsellors in Carlyle from 9 a.m to 5 p.m, Monday to Friday but to get into them and actually get help is tough, we require more.”
“We require active treatment. There are times of crisis. If they are physical and you have a heart attack you get taken care of but if it’s mental health, depression or suicide, there isn’t emergency care,” she said.
“We have to at least try and if they have go to rehab then we need way more mental health beds and rural services because they don’t exist. They need follow-up programs as well.”
Johnston said there is a lot more needed to be done from the government, in order to support individuals with mental health and addiction needs in rural areas.
“We don’t have the services and the laws to get help I guess, because there are really good health care workers out there and there’s really bad ones just like any profession, but we don’t have the laws and services that families require to deal with an addict. We don’t have the support, we don’t have the system to at least attempt to get them help.”
