{"id":253862,"date":"2025-11-01T05:12:22","date_gmt":"2025-11-01T05:12:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/253862\/"},"modified":"2025-11-01T05:12:22","modified_gmt":"2025-11-01T05:12:22","slug":"winnipeg-mom-says-despite-progress-more-mental-health-supports-needed-winnipeg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/253862\/","title":{"rendered":"Winnipeg mom says despite progress, more mental health supports needed – Winnipeg"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ten years after the death of her son, a Winnipeg mother is reflecting on progress being made in mental health services in Manitoba.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Bonnie Bricker\u2019s son, Reid, had a long struggle with mental health challenges.<\/p>\n

\u201cAbout age 28 or 29, he made a really good attempt to end his life and wound up in Victoria Hospital,\u201d Bricker told Global News.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs parents, we didn\u2019t know who to call, how to educate ourselves\u2026 How do you talk to a son who\u2019s almost died doing this? We had nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tBonnie Bricker has been advocating for improvements to mental health services for years.\t\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tJordan Pearn \/ Global News\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

In October 2015, Reid made three attempts on his life in a 10-day span. Each time, he ended up in hospital. Each time, he was released while in crisis.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe last time we were in a major hospital, he was let go in the middle of the night. And that was the last time that anybody saw him,\u201d Bricker said.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe all know being alone when you\u2019re suffering from suicidal ideation is the worst thing in the world, because you feel so hopeless anyways, and now you\u2019ve backed yourself in this corner and the only way out of that corner, if you don\u2019t let someone help you, is off the planet.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Since then, Bricker has been pushing for changes to mental health services in Manitoba. Reid\u2019s passing resulted in new legislation that saw changes to the Personal Health Information Act, which would allow a medical professional to reach out to a patient\u2019s system of care if serious harm was a possibility to the patient or others.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know as a parent, every time Reid went to the emergency department, I felt, \u2018Finally someone is going to listen to him, finally someone is going to help him.\u2019 And it failed him. Every. Single. Time,\u201d Bricker said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause they underestimated him. If they had talked to me, I would have given them information that he wouldn\u2019t have given them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bricker says mental health services have evolved in the past decade, and there are now resources in place that Reid didn\u2019t have access to a decade ago, including a peer support program through Peer Connections Manitoba that allows people with lived experience to help people in crisis in community and clinical settings.<\/p>\n

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\u201cPeer supporters, they don\u2019t go to school to learn what they do. They go through hard things,\u201d said Adam Milne, the peer services director at Peer Connections Manitoba.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo someone who comes in and gets to talk to someone who\u2019s been through something hard doesn\u2019t feel isolated in what they\u2019re doing, doesn\u2019t feel isolated in their journey.\u201d<\/p>\n

Peer Connections Manitoba also launched the Reid Bricker Mental Wellness Fund<\/a> to increase the availability of mental health supports in Manitoba.<\/p>\n

\u201cAn ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and the further we are able to help people and go alongside their journey, the better off we all are,\u201d said Monique Levesque-Pharoah, the director of development with Peer Connections Manitoba.<\/p>\n

Bricker says while progress is being made, there is still a long way to go, as mental health services remain largely underfunded in Manitoba.<\/p>\n

She says she continues to share her son\u2019s story in hopes of helping others walking a similar path that Reid once walked.<\/p>\n

\u201cMental health started to really evolve,\u201d Bricker said.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou would never hear somebody at a restaurant talking about mental health, but now you do. You would never hear somebody saying, \u2018my child is suicidal\u2019 because of the shame and the distortion and the perception of how that person is and that they\u2019re damaged. That is slowly going away.\u201d<\/p>\n

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If you or someone you know is thinking about suicide, help is available 24 hours a day. Call or text 988.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t&copy 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ten years after the death of her son, a Winnipeg mother is reflecting on progress being made in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":253863,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[49,48,84,393,394],"class_list":{"0":"post-253862","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-mental-health","12":"tag-mentalhealth"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253862\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}