B.C.’s first involuntary treatment centre opens at Surrey correctional facility

The first beds of British Columbia’s involuntary treatment program have come online.

Premier David Eby announced that the 10 beds, located in the South Fraser Pre-Trial Centre, would begin taking patients with overlapping mental health and substance use disorders or brain injuries.

This treatment centre will focus solely on patients who have come in contact with the justice system.

“This is the population that people are anxious about, it’s people that are struggling in a way that not only compromises their safety but the safety of the community as a whole,” Eby said.

“It creates the opportunity for us to intervene in that cycle of community, criminal offence, jail, community, criminal offence, jail over and over again.”

B.C.’s NDP government pledged to expand the use of involuntary treatment ahead of last fall’s provincial election amid growing concern about repeat violent offenders, many of whom struggle with drug and mental health issues.

Last month, the government released new guidance for doctors and health authorities, laying out the conditions under which someone could be forced into treatment against their will.

The guidance, authored by B.C.’s chief scientific adviser for psychiatry, toxic drugs and concurrent disorders Dr. Daniel Vigo, allows involuntary treatment in certain cases of mental impairment, but does not allow its use to stop someone’s “risky decision-making or override the person’s harmful or self-harmful behaviour.”

On Thursday, Vigo said starting the program with a first facility at the correctional centre would target the patients with the highest need.

“Up to now, patients requiring involuntary care due to psychomotor agitation, psychosis, mania or other severe mental syndromes resulting in impairment had to wait in segregation for weeks or more for a bed to free up at the forensic hospital,” he said.

“Our patients will now receive the level of psych care they need the moment they need it,” he added.

“This will result in the prevention of harms resulting from weeks of untreated agitation and psychosis. It will result in the implementation of a care plan sustained throughout their time in corrections and integrated with services in the community when correctional supervision ends.”

Eby said that Vigo’s analysis had identified up to 2,500 people in the province who meet the definition of struggling with mental health, addictions and brain injury, but that the core cohort the program will focus on is far smaller.

The province is slated to open another 20 beds later this spring at a facility in Maple Ridge that will house people who have not been arrested for a crime.

The province is also working to identify sites across the province to provide similar treatment.

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