It’s an unusually cool and cloudy summer afternoon in Kamloops and Lois Hyatt is sitting in the North Shore basement suite her 29-year-old son used to call home.

On the ledge beside her are memories of happier times — family photos, mementoes and keepsakes.

Spread out on the coffee table in front of her is a mess of paper. Sitting on top, a folder bearing the name of a local funeral home.

Hyatt’s son, Daniel Joseph Campbell, was found dead last month, hanging from concrete forms at a construction site mere metres away from the couch on which she is now sitting.

Her son’s story is a sad one, with an even sadder ending — an apparent suicide ending a life that was dominated by mental-health issues — but it’s not uncommon.

Now, Hyatt is hoping to use the tragic circumstances of her son’s forlorn life and untimely death to spread a message she thinks everyone should hear — and one she hopes will bring about change in a system that is not fit to deal with mental health issues.

Bright, funny and eager to succeed, Danny was also haunted by myriad mental-health issues — anxiety, depression and a borderline personality disorder coupled with ADHD — that would eventually lead to his death.

Hyatt said her son always had issues, but the situation didn’t become dire until earlier this year, when a seemingly vague threat threw his teetering life into a tailspin.

“He was told that a gang had money on his head,” she said. “So he was living for months in fear of this.”

Despite her best efforts, Hyatt said she’s been unable to confirm whether the gang had actually put out a hit on her son. But, in her mind, one thing is for certain — he believed it.

“He spent the last few months hiding out a lot,” she said. “He felt that we were unsafe, too. He was living in terror.”

The perceived threat on Danny’s life, combined with his mental-health issues, sent his life into chaos.

But he wanted help.

“He desperately wanted help,” Hyatt said. “He said all along that he wanted to see a psychiatrist, but to get in to see a psychiatrist is a different story.”

A referral from a doctor in February was followed by months of waiting.

An appointment was set — for 2 p.m. on June 4, Danny would finally get to see a psychiatrist and, if all went well, get his life back on track.

It was a day Hyatt and her son looked forward to, and hoped to look back on years later as a turning point — the day Danny started to turn it around.

As it turned out, June 4, 2009, is a day Hyatt will never forget — but for all the wrong reasons.

The day began ominously, with Danny describing to his mother an overnight confrontation with someone he believed to be affiliated with the gang that had a bounty on his head.

“During the night when they [Danny and a friend] went outside, these guys were whistling at them and heckling them,” Hyatt said, noting her son believed a nearby home to be a “gang house.”

“So he told me that in the morning he’d gone over and confronted these guys, and the one guy said that he was going to kill him.”

Hyatt said her son’s actions that morning showed her that something had happened.

“He was standing over here at the fence that Thursday morning and he was yelling — swearing — at whoever these people are,” she said.

“I just said to him, ‘Dan, stop it. Stop it. You’re going to bring thunder down on you.’”

As the day wore on, Danny’s behaviour became more erratic.

As the eagerly anticipated appointment with the psychiatrist approached, he became suicidal.

“He had made, I guess, three [suicide] attempts that day before going to this appointment,” Hyatt said. “Then I got him there and he refused to go in.

“He said he felt like he was having a nervous breakdown and I couldn’t get him into the office.”

Hyatt left her suicidal son sitting in her van with a knife held to his own throat and desperately raced into the doctor’s office.

She explained the situation and asked if the psychiatrist would come down to her van to talk to Danny.

Hyatt said the psychiatrist slammed her office door and the receptionist called police.

Within moments, three patrol cars descended on Hyatt’s van and two Mounties escorted her son into the doctor’s office.

The psychiatrist still refused to see him and Danny was taken by ambulance to Royal Inland Hospital.

At that point, Hyatt said, she was almost relieved.

Surely, she thought, her son would now receive the care he needed.

However, it didn’t go as she had hoped.

Hyatt said she waited with her son for hours at RIH, hoping the doctors there would realize the gravity of the situation and keep him overnight.

She began losing hope when she went to talk to the physician and mental-health worker who had been dealing with Danny.

“I’m standing there telling the doctor it’s imperative that my son not be released from the hospital, and I’ve got the criteria for involuntary admission from the Mental Health Act, and Danny met all the criteria,” she said.

“And, while I was saying this to the doctor, she looks at him with a real smirk on her face and then she turns to me and she goes, ‘OK that’s good, you can leave now.’”

Hyatt said she left the hospital at 6 p.m., suspecting Danny wouldn’t be held there for long. She returned to the Renfrew Avenue basement suite he called home and began making arrangements to fly him to visit relatives in Saskatchewan the following day.

“And then he shows up in a cab here,” she said. “They discharged him. And I was just blown away.

“They knew he was suicidal. They knew he was paranoid and delusional.

“They knew that he might possibly do something to somebody else because he was so paranoid.

“And they discharged him.”

Back at home, Danny told his mom he’d had enough. He said he was going to turn himself over to the gang that he felt had been making his life a living hell.

Then he left.

Hyatt, desperate and fearful for her son’s safety, called police to fill them in on the situation.

Then she waited.

A few hours later, at about 9:30 p.m., Danny ran home and asked his mom why she had called the police.

She told him they would take him to the hospital.

He told her that made him “a rat” in the gang’s eyes.

Then he ran away again.

“And, so, the last time I saw him, that’s what he was doing,” Hyatt said. “He was running and he was going to turn himself over to these people who were out to get him.”

Hyatt didn’t sleep much that night, worrying about Danny’s whereabouts between frantic calls to the RCMP.

The next morning, at about 10 a.m., Hyatt took her dog into the backyard of the Renfrew Avenue home, hoping to see her son returning home.

Immediately, she knew something was wrong.

A postman was “turning in circles” outside a nearby construction site. Next to him, a tradesman paced back and forth.

Both men were looking at a stack of concrete forms.

Hyatt ran over to the construction site, pressed herself against the fence and began screaming at the men.

“Is he dead?” she asked them.

“Is he dead?”

Neither man would answer.

“I said, ‘I’ve had the police looking for him all night. Is it my son? Is he dead? Is he dead?’”

By describing a tattoo Danny had on his forearm, Hyatt was able to confirm the body was that of her son.

“It was just hysterics,” she said. “Total hysterics.”

Now Hyatt is hoping the story of Danny’s death — and the treatment she describes as “insufficient” — will bring change to the way mentally ill people are dealt with in B.C.

“Trying to get help through mental health is just a hamster wheel,” she said.

“It’s totally inadequate. The services, the system — nothing gets done. Nothing.

“I mean, if somebody desperately wants help, why do they have to wait for months and months and months to obtain any help, until something like this happens?”

Though he couldn’t comment on any specific cases, an RIH official contacted by KTW said doctors always follow the same protocol.

“There are guidelines for the physicians to use,” said Kris Kristjanson, director of ambulatory care and diagnostics.

“It really comes down to the assessment the physician does to determine whether or not they need admittance to hospital.”

Kristjanson said emergency-room doctors do have the authority to hold a patient against their will based on their mental health.

“The emergency-room physicians can do that,” he said. “It’s up to the doctor.

“I certainly can’t speak for the doctor, but all patients are thoroughly assessed and seen by the physician and then it’s determined what’s going to be the most appropriate treatment plan.”

According to Hyatt, her son’s treatment plan should have involved a stay in hospital.

“How he was treated at the hospital is totally inadequate,” she said. “I think they should be held accountable there.

“When he went, he was totally compliant to go to the hospital — and they just let him go.”

Hyatt hopes to take Danny’s story to Victoria so other families won’t have to deal with the heartache she’s now experiencing.

“It’s a well-known fact that in this province, the mental health system is pretty non-existent,” she said. “There is waiting lists galore for everything. You put somebody into the psychiatric ward here with severe problems or severely suicidal and they discharge them the next day.

“It’s not right.”

CMHA IS THERE TO HELP

For someone struggling with mental-health issues, devising a strategy to combat the illness can seem daunting.

But there are number of places to turn.

Christa Haywood-Farmer, program manager at the Kamloops branch of the Canadian Mental Health Association, said a good first step is to get more information.

“They certainly could get information from us. We have lots of information,” she said.

“And there’s lots of services out there, too.”

Haywood-Farmer said it’s important for mental-health patients to visit the doctor on a regular basis.

“But every situation is so unique,” she said.

“Chances are if someone is having a mental-health crisis, their general practitioner might not be the best bet.

“If they’re threatening their safety or someone else, then obviously 911 or emergency services would have to be contacted.”

Haywood-Farmer encouraged anyone looking for more information on mental health to visit the CMHA’s Kamloops office at 857 Seymour St.

They can also be reached at 250-374-0440.