'Didn't deserve to die'

The mother of a 17-year-old Kelowna girl who died from an overdose in March said her daughter was turned away from help before she could be saved.

Chelsea Christianson was a goofy, loving teen who enjoyed acting, gymnastics and nature. Her mother calls her 'one of a kind' and said the last two years of her life wasn’t her – It was the drugs.

“When I first found out that she was having difficulty with drugs, it was really hard to find resources and nobody really knew anything for resources in the interior,” said Kimberly Christianson.

She suffered from depression and turned to drugs to make her feel better. Chelsea spent time in the adolescent psychiatry unit at the hospital and had been accessing the youth shelter in downtown Kelowna where she had a reconnect worker, mental health worker, addiction and drug worker and a psychiatrist.

After seven months, they finally received a referral to be accepted into the Peak House, a residential alcohol and drug treatment facility for youth in East Vancouver on July 5, 2016.

“That was my first moment in time that I had peace, that she was there for a little bit,” she recalls.

Chelsea went into detox for 10 days and when she finally arrived to Peak House, she was kicked out.

“Within a few hours they were calling me and they just said she has to leave. She can’t stay,” Christianson said. “They just said there was a policy and they wouldn’t let her stay and I found out later it was an in-house policy that another youth from Kelowna had been there.”

Castanet reached out to Peak House for a comment but did not receive a response in return.

At that time, she was refusing to stay at home and went back to living on the streets. That was when things got worse.

Christianson now knows that her daughter overdosed multiple times and was transported in an ambulance but she was never notified.

“She was going to the hospital overdosing and getting treatment and then saying, ‘I don't want my mom, or anyone to know,’ and then they would keep her for an hour and send her on her way,” she said.

“She was potentially … almost dying every single one of those times and nobody knew.”

Chelsea would have been celebrating her 18th birthday a few days ago, and now a 'Rest in Peace' Facebook page is filled with loving words and birthday wishes for the ‘bubbly blonde.' She died from an overdose after inhaling methamphetamine and fentanyl on March 19.

A long term facility is what Christianson thinks would be part of the solution but added the stereotype around mental health and addiction needs to shift.

“My daughter didn't deserve to die because she had a struggle, because she had an addiction. She deserved to get help, just like everyone else.”