Mental health care system failed Lions Bay man, mother says
Ryan Norris spent years trying to find help for his mental illness and drug addiction, before dying of suspected fentanyl overdose
Powerful opioid is finding its way onto Canadian streets and killing unsuspecting drug users
Ryan
Norris, described as a kind-hearted person and once-promising athlete,
spent his last days trying to get help for his addiction.
His spirits lifted, says his mother Christine, when he heard a space had become available at the Sage Health Centre in Kamloops, one of several treatment centres where he was wait-listed.
His bags were packed, when, about a week before he died, he received a call that the space was no longer available. He became despondent, and left the house in what his mother believes was a search for heroin to ease his pain.
Norris was among hundreds of mental health patients in B.C. waiting to get long-term treatment.
In the Vancouver health region alone, there are around 400 mental health patients on waiting lists for long-term housing, according to the latest figures from last year from the B.C. Schizophrenia Society.
A spokesman for the B.C. Health Ministry, Stephen May, could not confirm that number but said the government “absolutely” agrees that there is a need for more mental health and substance use beds in the province.
Norris, 35, was found dead in an east Vancouver apartment on Dec. 22, one of several suspected fentanyl overdoses in December.
At the time, Vancouver police had just issued another warning about the dangers of fentanyl being mixed in narcotics. The potentially fatal drug is showing up in a variety of recreational drugs, including cocaine, crystal meth, ecstasy and Fake 80s, a pill designed to mimic the strong painkiller OxyContin.
Norris didn’t live at the East Van apartment on Triumph Street where his body was found. He had been living with his parents in Lions Bay, a quiet retreat from his struggles with addiction and depression, a home that he, a professional contractor, had helped to build.
As a boy, Norris was quiet and kept to himself most days. If he struggled then with mental health illness, he didn’t talk about it, said his cousin Megan Baker, 36, and his mother.
But after he lost his lucrative construction firm, house and wife during the recession of 2008, everything changed. He had a psychotic break.
Over the next seven years, he would struggle with depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, and suicidal tendencies. He also suffered from concussions — one sustained while trying to kill himself by driving into a stone wall, and the other after he fell off a ladder while painting the family house.
When pharmaceuticals failed to help with what his mother believes was an enormous amount of pain, he turned to self-medicating with street drugs.
On the dining room table, Christine Norris displays photographs of her son. In several, he’s with his five-year-old son, Max, whom family say he adored. Next to the photos, a large silver platter of white candles burn in memorial.
“I just like to feel the warmth from the flame,” she says, tears filling her eyes. It has only been a few days since they held his celebration of life. “I am still so very sad, but I am also angry.”
She’s resentful of a health care system that failed her son, one lacking in long-term recovery beds for those suffering from addition and mental health illness.
His spirits lifted, says his mother Christine, when he heard a space had become available at the Sage Health Centre in Kamloops, one of several treatment centres where he was wait-listed.
His bags were packed, when, about a week before he died, he received a call that the space was no longer available. He became despondent, and left the house in what his mother believes was a search for heroin to ease his pain.
Norris was among hundreds of mental health patients in B.C. waiting to get long-term treatment.
In the Vancouver health region alone, there are around 400 mental health patients on waiting lists for long-term housing, according to the latest figures from last year from the B.C. Schizophrenia Society.
A spokesman for the B.C. Health Ministry, Stephen May, could not confirm that number but said the government “absolutely” agrees that there is a need for more mental health and substance use beds in the province.
Norris, 35, was found dead in an east Vancouver apartment on Dec. 22, one of several suspected fentanyl overdoses in December.
At the time, Vancouver police had just issued another warning about the dangers of fentanyl being mixed in narcotics. The potentially fatal drug is showing up in a variety of recreational drugs, including cocaine, crystal meth, ecstasy and Fake 80s, a pill designed to mimic the strong painkiller OxyContin.
Norris didn’t live at the East Van apartment on Triumph Street where his body was found. He had been living with his parents in Lions Bay, a quiet retreat from his struggles with addiction and depression, a home that he, a professional contractor, had helped to build.
As a boy, Norris was quiet and kept to himself most days. If he struggled then with mental health illness, he didn’t talk about it, said his cousin Megan Baker, 36, and his mother.
But after he lost his lucrative construction firm, house and wife during the recession of 2008, everything changed. He had a psychotic break.
Over the next seven years, he would struggle with depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, and suicidal tendencies. He also suffered from concussions — one sustained while trying to kill himself by driving into a stone wall, and the other after he fell off a ladder while painting the family house.
When pharmaceuticals failed to help with what his mother believes was an enormous amount of pain, he turned to self-medicating with street drugs.
On the dining room table, Christine Norris displays photographs of her son. In several, he’s with his five-year-old son, Max, whom family say he adored. Next to the photos, a large silver platter of white candles burn in memorial.
“I just like to feel the warmth from the flame,” she says, tears filling her eyes. It has only been a few days since they held his celebration of life. “I am still so very sad, but I am also angry.”
She’s resentful of a health care system that failed her son, one lacking in long-term recovery beds for those suffering from addition and mental health illness.
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