| May 31, 2017


Mikeal Teal had just turned 16. He was starting a summer job at Sunset's campground. He was in the midst of his first relationship and had just received his driver's license. He was thinking about buying a car. He was a devoted son and brother.
Those were the positive aspects of his life, but he also had many pressures, which all culminated in a final suicide attempt in the early hours of the morning on May 15th. He died five days later at Roger Nielson House, next to the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) in Ottawa.

His mother Leslee, step-father Al Whan and sisters Alley and Sidney are devastated, but they are also angry and determined that the mental health system that they say failed Mike gets fixed, and soon.

They sat in the kitchen of their home, which is tucked in next to the edge of a narrow bay off Sharbot Lake and the Trans-Canada Trail, as the trees were still leafing out around them last Friday morning (May 27). It made for a peaceful backdrop to the agony in their voices as they went over, for the hundredth time, the string of events from the last few days oftheir son’s life. They also reflected on the previous weeks, months and even years of their son's troubled life. They were raw with exhaustion and emotion, sometimes grasping for details as they told their story.

But they are determined to do something about the fact that, in their view and experience, children and adults in serious trouble are just patted on the back and sent home when they attempt to harm themselves, and it is a matter of urgency for them because Mike's girlfriend in Kingston has been facing her own difficulties since his death.

“This is a nightmare that no family should have to endure,” said Al Whan.

According to his mother Leslee, Mike faced pressures in school and elsewhere for many years.

“He was very protective of his sisters, and me. He worried about me,” she said.

And suicide had already touched him, as his father hung himself when Mike was only 7.

Mike’s fragile circumstances took a real turn in March of 2016, when his maternal grandfather, with whom he was very close, died suddenly.

A couple of months later a social worker Mike was seeing from Pathways for Children and Youth demanded that he seek treatment in hospital for his mental health issues, a process that was ultimately ineffective.

In the late fall things took a further turn for the worse, when in an effort to protect the reputation of his younger sister, he got into a violent fight with a boy at Granite Ridge High School. The fight started at the park near the school and ended up within school property. It led to Mike being expelled from school, further cutting him off socially. He began a relationship shortly after that, with a girl from Kingston, but his circumstances kept deteriorating and suicidal thoughts haunted him over and over again.

In January he told a doctor at the Sharbot Lake Family Health Team, where he went weekly to monitor his medication, that he had attemped suicide. That time he was brought to CHEO for 5 days, and was sent home with adjusted medication.

In February, after ice fishing with Al, “he took off ahead of me on his bike across the lake and  at full speed and he ran off the road. He wouldn't say what he was doing or trying to do or anything. Mike told his doctors about that event as well,” Al recalled.

In March he downed two bottles, 50 pills in all, of his anti-depressant medication and was rushed to Perth hospital and then to CHEO, where he remained overnight and was released the next morning.

Then, in late April, he drove his ATV down the trail to a secluded spot where he slashed his wrists and then drove at break-neck speed back towards home, helmetless.  A police search party found him just off the trail and he was taken to Kingston General Hospital by ambulance.

“He told the doctor 'I don't want to be alive – help me,’ and the doctor said the cuts on his arms were not that deep and we should adjust his medication and watch him carefully,” said Al Whan, “The doctor told us that Mike 'doesn't have a plan', and his suicide attempts were not enough of a reason for them to keep him and get him some help. ‘He doesn’t have a plan,’ I can’t forget those words.”

“I asked the doctor if that meant I was on suicide watch again, and he didn’t say anything, just said we should keep an eye on him,” said Leslee.

“We kept asking for help, we kept trying to watch him, to make sure he was ok, to look for the signs, but he needed real help, not just a change in dosage, said Whan.

Ten days later, Mike spent Mother’s Day helping Leslee strip the floor in the family kitchen, preparing to put a new floor in. At one in the morning, his girlfriend called Leslee and said Mike’s messages had gone from wifi to text and she knew he wasn’t in the house and was worried about him. Al ran down stairs to his bedroom in the basement of the house and found the room was full of blood but Mike wasn’t there. He found him a short time later. He had cut himself in his room and was hanging in a tree by the lake. Al cut him down and called 911. He still had a pulse but he had been without oxygen for too long.

Both of Mikes parents are now very worried about his girlfriend.

“And the hospital is doing the same thing, refusing to take her in for long term treatment, just sending her home with new medication,” said Al Whan.

“This is what needs to stop. Doctors, the system needs to start taking people seriously and treating them. Telling people not to worry because their children or cousins or brothers “don't have a plan” did not work for Mike and won't work for anyone else.”

Mikeal Teal's parents are committed to bringing change about in the system and are planning to bring as much attention as possible to his plight in order to make that happen. They have contacted politicians and media outlets and are considering a fund raising campaign to keep a public focus on mental health and suicide.

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