The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health will launch an external review of its practices around the issuance of day passes and other privileges in the wake of a patient with a violent pass fleeing the country earlier this month.
Zhebin Cong, 47, was charged in the fatal stabbing of his roommate in 2014 but was found not criminally responsible. He then disappeared on July 3 while on a day pass from CAMH.
Police searched for Cong for nearly two weeks before eventually learning that he had fled the country on an international flight on the same day he was reported missing.
The incident prompted criticism from a number of officials, including Premier Doug Ford who vowed to find out “who dropped the ball” and “hold people accountable.”
In a statement issued on Wednesday afternoon, CAMH President and CEO Catherine Zahn said that she understands how recent events have caused some in the community to grow concerned about the facility’s ability to “effectively manage the fine balance” between public safety and “providing mental health treatment with the ultimate goal of integrating people back into the community.”
For that reason, she said that an external review will be conducted into CAMH’s “process for passes and privileges involving forensic patients.”
“The review will look at incidents over the past several months to inform CAMH practice in the context of the broader forensic psychiatry system and to provide concrete recommendations for our organization,” she said.
Zahn said that she wants the external review to be completed by the end of 2019.
She said that her hope is that the review will contain “robust recommendations” that will allow CAMH to “enact change as expediently as possible in order to rebuild trust.”
The review comes on the heels of Police Chief Mark Saunders announcing an internal review of TPS procedures as they pertained to Cong’s disappearance last week.
“We have a duty to our patients and families, our physicians and staff, our neighbourhood and community and our province and country to do better. I take that duty very serious,” Zahn said.
Level of review for day passes increased
In its most recent assessment of Cong, the Ontario Review Board wrote that he continued to “pose a significant threat to the safety of the public.”
The board also noted that Cong didn't want to take his medication and expressed a desire to return to China to see his mother.
Speaking with reporters during a press conference, Zahn said that that patients found not criminally responsible are given an “increasing ability” to leave CAMH, first on supervised visits and then unsupervised. She said that Cong was in the midst of that process.
“People with mental illness, including severe and complex mental illness, do improve and our job is two-fold, one to protect the community and safety but also to help individuals recover from their mental illness,” she said.
In addition to Cong’s disappearance, a man found not criminally responsible in a string of armed robberies also briefly disappeared from CAMH earlier this week; however he was located later that day.
Zahan said that CAMH has already “increased the level of review for passes” and has assigned additional clinical staff and security staff to assist with that pending the completion of the external review.
