The parents of a teen girl suffering from a mental illness who wandered away from a B.C. hospital this week are calling for more measures to track psychiatric patients.

Seventeen-year-old Milena Nordwall spent 20 hours in the cold after disappearing from Lions Gate Hospital in North Vancouver on Tuesday night. She was found hiding in a wooded area near the hospital, wearing nothing but a hospital gown.

It was the sixth time that Nordwall, who suffers from paranoia, had escaped care and her parents believe better safeguards are needed.

"I'd love to see some kind of a bracelet on her or something that gives us the ability to track her so that if one of these episodes occurs and she goes missing again, we have a way to easily find her," dad Andrew Nordwall told CTV News.

Vancouver Coastal Health says security bracelets are already in use at Lions Gate for dementia patients, but they may not be appropriate in other cases.

"I've never seen them used in a medical setting before, because these aren't prisons. They are not places where people have been charged criminally," spokeswoman Traci Beutel said.

However, she said it's possible the medical community should look into using security bracelets in cases like Milena's.

The parents of Hayden Kozeletski, a 16-year-old who committed suicide in Saanich a year ago, believe that a security bracelet could have saved their daughter's life.

"I think it's a fabulous idea," mom Barb Kozeletski said. "The system failed Hayden. I don't ever want to see that happen again."

On the night of her death, Hayden had fled Ledger House, a pediatric mental health facility. Her suicide prompted the Vancouver Island Health Authority to improve its security protocols at psychiatric facilities.

And yet, during Thursday's proceedings in the inquest into Kozeletski's death, it was revealed that another youth had run away from Ledger House since those new protocols were introduced.

Mental health advocates believe that the issue of security bracelets should be broached carefully.

"It could help in very dangerous situations. The safety of the person must come first, but we must always consider the person's right to make a decision," said Jane Dyson of the B.C. Coalition of People with Disabilities.

She says cases like Milena and Hayden's are helping to open up discussion in the medical community about the security of psychiatric patients.

With a report from CTV British Columbia's Peter Grainger