Taken from: http://www.thespec.com/article/554793


His mother Diane sat by his side, crying, sometimes begging nurses for help for her suicidal son.

"I felt like I was in the middle of this sea trying to save him, and nobody, nobody wanted to help me," said Simon, who lives in the town of Cottam outside of Leamington.

"It broke my heart because it sent a message to my son that he was unlovable."

After 17 hours, Cale was admitted to a residential facility for teens. A few weeks later he was sent home.

There was no backup plan, no heath care worker to call if he felt suicidal again.

Six months later, with a cold rain beating down on the bathroom window, Cale took an electrical cord, swung it over the shower stall and hung himself.

Diane was alone when she found her son. Frantic and crying, she cut him down and tried to revive him. It was too late.

Cale Simon was 16 when he died.

His mother views the night her son sat waiting in the ER as typical of how he'd been treated all his life -- forgotten by a system that has turned its back on children with mental health problems.

Cale had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder when he was nine, but never found the medication or help he needed.

"He most definitely could have been saved," said Simon. "If the right services had been there he would be alive today."

One in five children has a mental health problem, ranging from mild to life threatening. Their problems are compounded by a mental health system that's starved of funds and services. Families find it impossible to navigate, and have been forced into survival mode.

Experts universally agree that early intervention is the single most important tool for a child with a mental health problem.

They know that more than 70 per cent of adult mental illness has its onset in childhood or youth. They also know that if a child is treated early, it can change the entire trajectory of his or her life.

Still, children's mental health services remain among the most underfunded of any service in Canada's health care system.

Without change, the Canadian Paediatric Society, along with other groups, warns that mental health problems among children threaten to become the next pediatric epidemic.

Despite her devastating loss, Simon refuses to give up.

"I'm in the perfect place to fight because I lost my son. What else can they take away from me?"