A 24-year-old Ile Perrot man who suffers from borderline personality disorder is in desperate need of medical help. He tried to take his own life twice last month and has been searching for specialized services in English ever since.
His mother has turned to social media, hoping to raise money and awareness about the lack of English language mental-health services in Quebec.
“Watching him lay in a coma and not know if he was gonna wake up or not was extremely painful and difficult,” Sherry Brunet said.
Her son’s medical team has established that he needs an intensive in-patient treatment program called Dialectical Behavioural Therapy or DBT but the only one available to him is in French.
“I’m happy I have somewhere to go, I’m just nervous that it’s a French program,” Nick Gravel said. “I’m not sure I’m gonna understand everything.”
The Quebec government covered the cost to send him to an English treatment centre in Ontario five years ago, but since 2016, RAMQ no longer pays for that type of out-of-province care.
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Gravel has agreed to attend a French facility starting on Tuesday and until then, he’s stuck in a drug rehab centre because going home is out of the question.
“I’m in a rehab centre. Everyone there is dealing with cravings and their addiction, and I’m just wanting to end my life every day so it’s difficult,” Gravel told Global News.
His family has set up a GoFundMe page and has managed to raise more than $4,000 in less than a week. It’s encouraging but not nearly enough to pay for private treatment in Ontario that costs well over $1,000 a day.
“For him to do that in French, in a language that he’s not 100 per cent comfortable in, I have concerns that he’s not gonna get through it,” Brunet said.
In a recent post on Facebook, his mother wrote she’ll hold the health minister personally responsible if her son does take his own life.
Quebec’s health ministry confirmed in an email on Friday that the $35-million investment in mental-health services announced in December will help fund a public psychotherapy program that is currently being developed.
While a French therapy program isn’t his first choice, Gravel is convinced that it’s better than nothing.
“I’m hoping I’ll be able to understand everything,” he said. “I’m gonna give it a chance, hopefully, it works out. If it doesn’t, I hope I can find somewhere else to go. I don’t really have another option.”
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