La Loche needs 24-hour mental health services after mass shooting: MP

The MP for the remote Saskatchewan community of La Lochesays the people there are in urgent need of round-the-clock mentalhealth services as they struggle to deal with the aftermath of atragic mass shooting.

Georgina Jolibois says people in the Dene community are showingsigns of post-traumatic stress disorder.

In a letter to Health Minister Jane Philpott, the New Democrat MPsaid one young person attempted suicide earlier this week.

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On Jan. 22, a 17-year-old boy allegedly shot and killed twoteenaged brothers before going on a rampage at the local highschool, where he killed a teacher and a teacher's aide and woundedseven others.

The shooter, who can't be named under the Youth Criminal JusticeAct, has been charged with first-degree murder and attempted murder.

Jolibois saidthe tragedy has provoked a mental health crisis inthe community, but there are not enough mental healthprofessionalsto deal with it.

Moreover, she said: "People are forced to re-visit the scene ofthe shooting every day with the only change to our school beingwhere they have sealed off the areas where victims died."

Situation now intolerable, Jolibois says

Jolibois saidLa Loche has struggled for years, long before theshooting, with inadequate mental health services, but that situationhas now become intolerable. She askedPhilpott to "send helpimmediately" and to "urgently invest" in mental health services.

"We need culturally appropriate mental health services availablearound the clock in our own community to save lives and to help usheal," she said in the letter.

We already now findourselves without adequate support.- Georgina Jolibois, NDP MP

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau visited the community a week afterthe shooting and promised that the federal government would be therefor the people of La Loche for years to come, Jolibois noted.

"The people of La Loche understood this commitment to mean thatthe services we need to grieve, to heal and to thrive would continueto be made available to us that we would not be left on our own totry and deal with this grievous tragedy."

Yet less than two months later, she says, "We already now findourselves without adequate support."

There is often no one at the community's health centre after 5p.m., "meaning too often that for people seeking support there isliterally no one to turn to for help," Jolibois said.