South Okanagan mom losing hope that her son will ever get help for mental health, addictions

'No help, no hope'

Editor's Warning: This story includes discussion of suicide. Reader discretion is advised.

A South Okanagan mother has lost hope that British Columbia health care and addictions services will be able to help her son, amidst an ongoing discussion about gaps in services in the region.

Morgan* said she feels helpless in her efforts to see her 26-year-old son receive treatment, who she said has fallen deeper into addiction after failing to get mental health help in time.

While her son struggled with mental health growing up, his more prominent issues started around three years ago after his father died, when Morgan said her son expressed that he wanted to kill himself with a blade he was holding.

"I phoned the police for help. They found the blade on him and brought him to the hospital, and they released him within hours, because he was calm when they got there," Morgan said.

"So this is my problem with our medical system, is [the decision that] if he is calm, there's nothing wrong with him."

He had another outburst the next night. When Morgan tried to help him, she got injured. Again, she phoned the RCMP.

"They brought him to the hospital. I followed, and they let him go again. So basically, I was told that unless something is occurring at the moment, while they're in the hospital, and unless they ask for help, there's nothing that they can do."

She said even with a suicide note that was left for his family, they still wouldn't hold him for medical or psychiatric help.

After that, Morgan said her son left their house and disappeared for a year.

Exhausted every avenue

Both Morgan and her son say they have reached out for help everywhere they've been told to for mental health and addictions services. They don't hear back for months.

At one point, Morgan said her son ended up in the hospital for three days and he asked for help.

"They didn't keep him. They released him. They gave me a card to phone a mental health service and said, 'We'll call you,'" she said.

"A few months go by, and now he's starting to degrade even more. Nobody phoned, and I know they didn't phone because it was my number that he gave them; he doesn't have a phone."

Once her son started to go downhill, she called them again, pleading for help.

"Nobody phoned me back. And then later that week, he had a huge relapse," she said. "It's taken them months to get back to me and by then it's too late. By then, he's relapsed, because that's what turns the pain off."

Protective care failing

Morgan had applied through the BC Mental Health Act to have police apprehend and transport her son to a designated facility for psychiatric assessment and treatment for up to 48 hours.

"So I did that, and the judge was very concerned with what I presented, but once again, I found out they picked him up, brought him to the hospital, he talked to a psychiatric doctor, and was released within hours."

Her son is now living on the streets and won't accept help. She said it's due to him slipping through the cracks before.

"I've tried to talk to him, but he's completely addicted again," Morgan said.

"[It] takes months to years to get low-income housing."

Seeing Penticton's 50 tiny homes project turned down by council was disappointing, Morgan said, knowing that would be a step up for many waiting in shelters to transition to low-income housing in the shelters.

"I have no hope. I feel like there's no help, there's no hope. I am devastated."

The same story

The Penticton and Area Overdose Prevention Society, which works as a mobile overdose prevention site and hands out survival equipment while also connecting people to resources, has seen this situation all too often.

Desiree Surowski, cofounder of P+OPS, said there are "ridiculous" wait times for people entering treatment.

"And not only are there wait times, but there are barriers to the people who apply for the treatment when they're unhoused," she said.

"When you live unhoused, you don't have resources available to you, the simplest one being a phone [...] even for detox centres, you have to call in every day to keep your spot. So you call in every day, and you stay at the top of their wait list until there's a bed available."

Post-detox, there is a disconnect between detox and treatment facilities.

"It's really hard to align them so that when someone leaves detox, they go straight to treatment," she said, adding that mandated treatment for those in active addiction engaging in crime is also problematic.

"It's baffling that we're even talking about mandated treatment when we don't have adequate treatment resources for the people who want to go," she said.

"We need adequate treatment facilities, and we need treatment facilities that are regulated and have proven evidence-based modalities in them."

'Dead people don't go to treatment'

While there may be some safe consumption sites and recovery sites, much of the in-between and after is missing in the South Okanagan.

"As much as people don't like the term harm reduction, harm reduction is vital to treatment services because dead people don't go to treatment," Surowski said.

"Harm reduction keeps people alive, well and engaged [...] just because we hand out clean supplies while we're keeping them engaged with services, shouldn't negate the validity of harm reduction services."

B.C. is now in year 10 of the declared public health emergency regarding drug-related overdoses, and things are about to change.

Numerous drug user support groups have spoken against B.C.'s drug 'recriminalization' plans.

"We know that prohibition doesn't work," Surowski said.

"Enhancing services for people in compassionate ways, which is harm reduction, which is adequate treatment, which is early education for children, and an enforcement aspect. But the enforcement aspect should not be focused on street-level users."

From the pandemic onward, drug deaths in B.C. had been back on the rise, with 2,589 across the province in 2023. Across B.C., it dipped to 1,538 overdose deaths in the first 10 months of 2025, compared to 2,315 over all of 2024.

Surowski said that with doctors pulling back on safe supply and prescribed alternatives, she expects to see people dying this year at "alarming rates."

"We're using the same playbook for the war on drugs, 10 years into a health emergency, when all the experts are screaming, 'This is going to cause deaths,'" she said.

Only hope jail?

Morgan said she prays her son gets arrested and put into jail, because then government bodies "actually pay attention."

"Going to jail [seems like] the only thing that I have left to hope for, because he's so deep in his addiction now that I don't know if he'd even want the help if it was offered."

While drugs are harder to access in jail, they still find a way in.

Morgan said police will only go to check on her son if he has directly told her he's going to hurt himself. Otherwise, they can't help.

She has been relying on outreach workers with P+OPS to keep an eye out for her son.

"For people who still have parents that are actively engaged with them, even during times of chaos, they're consenting to keep that relationship streamlined, and then we can play a role in that kind of facilitation of that relationship," Surowski said.

'It's lives we're playing with.'

Morgan said she wants to see more resources available for people when they're in crisis, immediately.

She said she sees locals say, "'Our homeless, let's not really help them, because they could be helping themselves if they really wanted to,' and it's like, no, I've seen them when they want to. And the help is not there. Or it is, but it's not immediate.'"

Morgan said her hope in sharing her story is not to criticize the frontline services, but to advocate for stronger systems.

"Expand our resources, expand the services to those who are experiencing issues. Because it's lives we're playing with."

Surowski said the most frustrating part of her job is not dealing with people with complex behaviours, it's hearing society talk about others like they are not worthy of living in this world.

"Me and all my staff, we are very proud of the work we do, and we're constantly having to defend it to people who are just saying despicable things about other human beings. These are our peers. This is our community."

A report commissioned by B.C.’s chief coroner last October found that suicide is the third most common cause of death among young adults aged 19 to 29 years.

"While the number of young lives lost to suicide in British Columbia has remained relatively unchanged over the last several years, little progress has been made in terms of understanding, recognizing and reducing risk," the report said.

There were five recommendations to reduce such deaths listed, including the creation of a provincial suicide risk reduction framework specifically focused on youth and young adults.

It says training of medical professionals should include early identification, assessment and follow-up of young people who may be at higher risk of death by suicide.

Waitlist for her, too

Morgan said she applied for support services for parents who have children battling addiction. That also comes with a waitlist.

"Even just to get support as a mother in this town takes months, too, right? I've actually signed up on Facebook pages just to get other people's stories and see that I'm not alone," she said.

"It's devastating. As a parent, watching your child ask for help, not getting it in time, and then watching them just deteriorate, you're hurting too."

*Castanet has agreed to use a pseudonym to tell Morgan's story