The article has more in depth discussion than the excerpts that I’ve pulled here, please give it a read if you are curious
VANCOUVER - Maya Cassady was just two months away from graduating high school with honours when she obtained her mental health records through a freedom of information request.
Just hours after reading the contents, which included doctors’ ponderings about a diagnosis, the 17-year-old took her own life.
It was March 30, 2023. Since Maya’s death, her mother, Hilary Cassady, has become an advocate for youth mental health, raising flags about young people using FOIs to access their charts — and risking misinterpreting the contents.
Cassady said she believes Maya concluded her mental health condition was untreatable, after reading terminology about her case that was never discussed with either of them.
And while the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of B.C. said the head of a health authority could block the release of documents deemed potentially harmful to a recipient, it said it would “not be possible” to screen all requests.
Cassady said the emergency room psychiatrist who saw Maya on the visit that was the subject of her request did not even know she had sought the records.
In most of B.C.'s health authorities, including Vancouver Coastal Health where Maya was treated, people can request their medical records without the consent of a legal guardian starting at age 12.
Cassady said she was unsure when her daughter made the FOI request, but believes she collected it from the family mailbox the same day she died.
The request, Cassady said, focused on a four-day stay at Lions Gate Hospital in February 2023 after an acetaminophen overdose that a doctor believed was an “impulsive” suicide attempt by Maya.
Cassady said her daughter’s friends reported seeing her reading the FOI documents and Googling terms on her ferry commute to school from Bowen Island, off West Vancouver, and again during her spare period later that morning. She died later that day.
“She had given up hope when she felt that her diagnosis was untreatable — that was the response when she Google searched some of the terminology in the report,” Hilary said of her daughter.
She said she drew that conclusion after looking at her daughter’s phone in the days after her death, trying to piece together her state of mind. She said one of the last search results that showed up in the teen’s phone browser was that her symptoms were “untreatable.”
“That is etched in my brain,” she said of the word, sure of what she saw but noting that she has not been able to duplicate the search results since.
Cassady said her daughter searched, “Is persistent depressive disorder lifelong?” She also looked up terms, including “axis II traits” and “bd-ii,” which most commonly refers to bipolar II, her mother said.
The chart also classified the girl’s “admitting diagnoses” as “chronic dysthymia vs unspecified depressive disorder,” and said the teen was “not acutely suicidal.”
Cassady said Maya had been diagnosed with major depressive disorder but neither of them had been informed of most of the other terms included in her chart, including the working theory she may have undiagnosed borderline personality disorder.
Poor girl. Rest in peace.
The doctor who failed this patient is to blame, and the system that compelled them to provide apathetic care.
Sounds like she was just looking for a reason if this was the second attempt. She would have found another if not this one.
Ok so rather than making mental health supports better and removing th stigma of having mental health issues we just blame the ability for people to have access to data about themselves. Sounds like the parents and the system failed the poor kid. They were going to keep trying to kill themselves unless they actually were given the help they needed.
It’s terrible that this happened, but I think a docs notes from a 4 day stay don’t make an accurate full picture of the persons underlying issues. So it would be difficult to diagnose from that event alone, and the other diagnosis may have been more accurate.
I guess it depends on if she had follow up care after the incident.
I think being in that sort of state is going to make anything you read from the doc come in as a negative bias. Parents really should be consulted as FOI is handed over, so they can discuss together.
Most parents would be googling terms the same as this girl was.
A better solution is for physicians to be open about what they’re writing/typing … and offering the patient an opportunity to read - and discuss - everything right then and there.
That’s what I was taught by my prof in university in BSW.
Agreed
The FOI wasn’t the issue, it was the contents. Doctors should understand that patients can get this info and always be very careful about what they include.
Since doctors/staff communicate to each other in a shorthand, and it would be very difficult to make all that internal communication written in an accessible way. We would likely need a separate team of people transcribing and adding context to all the notes.
What might be a good first step is freeing up healthcare capacity to respond to patient’s inquiries. After that, if we can set up some way of communicating the available resources to the person who FOI’s the medical records, they can get in touch if they have questions.
As if doctors give a shit.
You’re being down voted but you’re fucking right. I’ve worked tech support with SO many physicians, I can say with absolute 100% certainty that the vast majority of doctors do not give a single shit.
What really sealed the deal was when I started listening for hand washing when they’d left the bathroom.
I’ve only heard a faucet once.
In 6 years of listening daily.
I didn’t even know that was possible. /goes to FOI own medical records
You probably don’t need to. You can just access it via health gateway.
