Tologanak family lawyer blasts Nunavut, NWT, for poor mental health services

Steven Cooper, the lawyer representing the family of Julian Tologanak-Labrie at an inquest held in Cambridge Bay this week, urged a six-person jury to produce recommendations that could lead to better mental health services for Nunavut and Northwest Territories residents. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

CAMBRIDGE BAY— Steven Cooper, the lawyer representing the family of Julian Tologanak-Labrie today blasted the governments of Nunavut and the Northwest Territories for failing to provide adequate mental health services, in his closing remarks at an inquest held in Tologanak-Labrie’s death.

“’I’m feelin’ fine,’ says Julian, and off he walks to his death. He should never have been on that plane. In a world drowning in information, Julian died for lack of it,” Cooper said.

The inquest, presided over by Garth Eggenberger, the chief coroner of the Northwest Territories, was charged with answering questions about why Tologanak-Labrie, a normally cheerful 20-year-old, jumped out of a small aircraft near Cambridge Bay on April 15, 2009.

Before heading off to draft their recommendations, the jury, all six residents of Cambridge Bay, listened to a summation from Cooper, who represented many northern aboriginal clients in the $2.1 billion national residential school settlement.

Cooper told the jury that Tologanak-Labrie’s legacy will be their recommendations.

These will mean that “a suicidal patient in the care of our mental health system won’t be free to end his own life,” he said.

And they could lead to more psychiatrist availability in the NWT and Nunavut, he said.

On the night the RCMP brought Tologanak-Labrie came in to the Stanton Territorial Hospital, there was no psychiatrist on call.

“Why aren’t people in the NWT and Nunavut able to have similar access to mental health services people in the South,” Cooper said.

On April 15, 2009 Tologanak-Labrie’s life hung by a thread formed by what Cooper called strands of information about the troubled youth.

The strands started with his friends, wound through the RCMP, who arrested him after they found him holding a knife in the kitchen of a hotel.

They went on to the doctors and nurses on the night shift who first saw Tologanak-Labrie at Yellowknife’s Stanton Territorial Hospital when the RCMP brought him in about 2 a.m. in the morning.

“None of these strands of information alone were strong enough to keep Julian alive, but together they could support him,” Cooper said.

But after the emergency physician on duty, Dr. David Pontin left at 7 a.m., the thread started to unravel, Cooper said.

“Julian was dead the moment Dr. Pontin went off shift.”

The psychiatrist who later spent 50 minutes with Tologanak-Labrie found no psychotic symptoms in the young man, after questioning him about his state of mind.

The hospital released him with a scheduled follow-up in Cambridge Bay for April 22.

Within hours, Tologanak-Labrie had forced open the door of a King Air 200, took a look around. and jumped.

Cooper asked the members of the inquest’s jury to reject all the conclusions of the psychiatrist Dr. Thomas Riley.

Cooper said Riley did not seek any information from Tologanak-Labrie’s family about his state of mind.

“You can ignore his suggestion that he did not need it or it did not matter. You cannot blame him, but you can disagree with him and I encourage you do so.”

Cooper also urged the jury to reject the system that allowed Tologanak-Labrie to be released.

“You can blame a system that did not recognize a man screaming for help in so many non-verbal ways,” he said.

Tologanak-Labrie likely gave false answers to Ripley, so he could leave the hospital, suggested Cooper.

Ripley, who testified that he based his opinion of Tologanak-Labrie on the answers he gave him, concluded he had “adjustment disorder complicated by excessive drinking,” leading to blackouts.

But “an insane person may not even know he is insane,” Cooper said.

“Julian may not have known how close to death he was, he wasn’t able to self-assess.”

But the signs of his distress weren’t missing, Cooper said, although no one was encouraged to pull the pieces of the puzzle together: the doctors didn’t call the mother, the psychiatrist was not on call and the social worker who arranged Tologanak-Labrie’s departure testified she didn’t recall his mother telling her something was wrong with her son.

“In a day and age when I can use my cell phone in Cambridge Bay and Arviat, no one picked up a phone call for information. No one called anyone. No one followed up. No one investigated, no one probed,” Cooper said.

That’s because people put privacy before life “setting unrealistically high standards before forcing someone to stay in custody for their own safety,” Cooper said, in what was not even a criminal case.

People worried about the “freedom of the patient, he said, but “dead people have no freedom in any earthly sense.”

Coroner Eggenberger recommended that the jury consider asking both the NWT and Nunavut to review and revise their mental health legislation.

On this Thursday afternoon, April 15, exactly a year to the day that Julian Tologanak-Labrie jumped from a plane heading to Cambridge Bay to Yellowknife, the jury remained in seclusion, preparing recommendations intended to avoid a similar death in the future.