I am an Indigenous woman who has struggled with mental health. After being the victim of criminal harassment and a later attempted break-in, I came to the Pontiac seeking safety. Within a week, the household where I was staying called 911 and reported that I was having a mental-health episode.
When emergency responders arrived, I explained my recent trauma and that the people who called had repeatedly threatened to have me instituationalized without cause. I felt dismissed and not believed. As a result, I was detained under Act
P-38.001 and held in a Gatineau psychiatric ward for two nights and three days.
After three days, a psychiatrist at the hospital told me, in his words, that he “had no legal reason to detain someone against their will for an acute stress response,” and concluded my reaction was a normal response to trauma rather than a psychotic disorder. That assessment — and the experience of being held without access to fresh air, personal devices or timely legal advice — was deeply distressing and retraumatizing.
This was not an isolated experience. In February 2025 I called municipal services to ask about my rights and how to safely leave a home where I was being held against my will. When officers attended that call, I again felt treated like a problem rather than a person in need of help; at the end of that response, I was issued a ticket for insulting an officer. The encounter left me frightened and uncertain about where to turn for safe, non-punitive support.
These experiences have convinced me of two things. First, mental-health crises and trauma responses require specialized, trauma-informed, and culturally aware responses — not only policing. Second, our region needs better non-armed crisis-intervention services, improved access to trauma counselling, and more support for people fleeing abusive situations. That would create safer options for people in crisis and reduce the risk of retraumatization.
I share this to encourage public discussion and to call for alternatives to an exclusively police-led response to mental-health emergencies — especially for people who are Indigenous, neurodivergent, or otherwise vulnerable.
Name and location withheld by request.
Published in the Pontiac Journal on September 24, 2025
