B.C. teen shares struggles with mental health, calls for better services

Content warning: Some readers may find the details of this story disturbing. f you or anyone you know is struggling, there are a number of ways to get help, including by calling or texting Suicide Crisis Helpline at 988. A list of crisis centres in Canada is also available here.

Emmy Casper-Joe hadn’t even reached her teens when she started to struggle with her mental health.

“(She was) 12, that’s when I found her in the bathroom self-harming,” said her mom, Lizzy Casper-Joe.

“My initial reaction was just gut-wrenching guilt and a lot of mom shame surrounding having a kid who's self-harming

Emmy, now 15, clearly remembers that moment her mother found her.

“My mom walked in on me and she started crying. And she was asking me, ‘Do you want do die? Why are you doing this to yourself?’” she recalled.

At the time, her mom didn’t know her daughter had suffered trauma that was compounded when she started getting bullied at her new school.

“It started to arise with all these feelings: I’m not good enough, these people all hate me, maybe I should hate me,” the Chilliwack teen recalled.

The self-harm escalated and Emmy Casper-Joe repeatedly ended up in Chilliwack General Hospital.

“She tried to kill herself five times that I know and absolutely needed to be hospitalized,” recalled her mom, who also said her daughter was often released from hospital before family felt she was ready to go home and had proper supports in place.

“I was willing to get help, but the system took so long in a way, that it started to feel like there was no help for me and I didn’t want help any more,” Emmy Casper-Joe said.

After one particularly serious incident, her mom begged a doctor not to send Emmy home.

“I was a sobbing mess. I knew my kid needed help and I couldn’t get her the help she needed. And so I told him, ‘If I bring her home, she is going to die and I don’t think I will survive that,’” she said.

The doctor listened and referred Emmy to the Adolescent Psychiatric Unit at Surrey Memorial Hospital.

But she wouldn’t stay there long.

“I was so upset that I was telling them exactly what I was wanting to do. ‘When I get home, I want to kill myself and I will do it if you send me home,’” she said.

“They still sent me home,” she added.

Within three weeks of leaving the treatment program, she said she was back in the hospital in Chilliwack.

She admits she lied to doctors about her condition, a reality her mom also witnessed.

“My kid was so, so good at telling them (doctors) lies and saying, ‘No, I’m perfectly fine,’” recalled Lizzy Casper-Joe.

Her daughter said she finally turned a corner when she scared herself.

“I had taken medication, my own medication, to try and overdose. And I realized I didn’t want to do this,” the teenager said.

Both she and her mom believe there need to be more treatment options for children and teenagers, particularly in the Fraser Valley.

“The places that there are, in general, in B.C, they have long wait lists, six months, nine months for long-term care so you can do proper assessments and proper mental health check-ins with the kids,” Lizzy Casper-Joe said.

She wants to encourage parents who also have children in a mental health crisis to advocate for better care.

“I think it’s important for parents to remember to be persistent… If you don’t feel comfortable taking your kid home (from hospital), don’t take your kid home. Keep fighting that fight,” she said.

Emmy Casper-Joe said she’s sharing her story with the hope of helping other young people struggling with their mental health.

She said she’s since turned her life around.

“I love school. I’m hanging out with friends and spending a lot of time with my family,” she said.

“I love life. This is awesome!”

Her mom said it’s wonderful to have her child feeling better.

“This is the brave… Indigenous, empowered little woman that I raised ," she said.

"And now she’s back and I’m super excited because she wants to change the world.”