A national suicide hotline launches thanks to a local MP

Todd Doherty has been pushing for a 988 service for years but has been pushing for better mental health supports even longer

November 30, 2023

When he was 14-years-old, Todd Doherty lost his best friend to suicide.

“I was the last person to see him,” he told CBC’s As It Happens last year. “And, you know, all these years later … you carry so much guilt.”

Doherty is the MP for Cariboo-Prince George, the riding that stretches from the Williams Lake area up into the southern part of our city. He was first elected in 2015, and for much of that time has been pushing to bring increased mental health supports to fruition, including a framework to recognize post-traumatic stress disorder and, as of today, the launch of a national 988 hotline to provide 24/7 support country-wide to people contemplating suicide and self-harm.

In an emotional video posted from the Canadian Tire parking lot last year, Doherty said he was “moved to tears” upon learning the hotline would become a reality. In that same As It Happens interview, he reflected on the need for people to have those tough conversations:

When I was in my early twenties, I worked crisis intervention and suicide prevention, and I'd be asked to go in schools and into communities to do this work. But yet they didn't want me to talk about or mention suicide because we don't want copycats. 

I'm hopeful that 988 … breaks down that one barrier that regardless of wherever you are and whoever and whatever background you come from, that if you're struggling and you need someone to talk to, that you don't have to remember the cumbersome 10-digit number that is different in different areas of the country and may not even be available in some areas of our country.

Doherty was emotional again this week when he rose in the House of Commons to speak about Carson Cleland, the 12-year-old Prince George boy who took his life last month after being sexually extorted. “I am heartbroken and I am angry,” he told his fellow MPs.

“I’m angry that yet another family has lost a loved one to suicide. Carson Cleland was just like any other 12-year-old boy from Prince George. He was involved in sports. He was active in his community. But he fell prey to a sadistic predator whose only motivation was to do harm.

“Ryan, Carson’s dad, has urged us all to do better, to be better. To make sure parents talk to their kids, check their internet history, have those tough conversations.”

…

“When do we, as families, get to have closure?”

Speaking to My Prince George Now, Doherty said the fact the 988 hotline was launching the same week Cleland’s death became public had filled him with mixed emotions.

“If 988 had been in place at that time would he have been able to reach out and could we have saved him and spared this family from being left behind to pick up the pieces.

“I also think back to my own experience with suicide based on how many friends I have lost. I lost my best friend when I was 15 and it’s really framed my focus on trying to do whatever we can so that another family doesn’t have to be left to pick up the pieces.”

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