Distress Centre Calgary takes thousands of crisis calls every year, including suicides in progress. (CBC)

Alberta has strategies in place to help people with mental illnesses as provincial crisis centres report a growing number of high-risk distress calls, Alberta's health minister says.

The Distress Centre Calgary received calls from 80,000 people in 2009, with a high number of them being suicides in progress, said spokeswoman Michelle Wickerson.

"Our calls are getting more complex and increasingly high risk and that's including our suicide calls," she said, revealing more than 600 calls required immediate emergency intervention.

On Monday, CBC News reported the case of Shayne Anonson, who hanged himself in a Calgary hospital room in February after trying to seek psychiatric help. He had been struggling with depression and alcoholism.

Bruce Conway, a spokesman from Alberta Health Services, confirmed that a "safety review" is being conducted in Anonson's case, but said the investigation's results would not be publicized unless his family releases them.

'I just don't get a sense that there's a grand scheme or plan to affirmatively address the overall problems of wait lists in mental health.'— Dr. Lloyd Maybaum, psychiatrist

The case has again turned the spotlight on long wait lists for mental health services, which advocates say commonly falls below priorities such as surgery.

But Health Minister Gene Zwozdesky pointed out the province is moving forward on certain programs, such as assertive community treatment (ACT), which helps those with severe mental illness monitor their medication and access medical care and housing.

"There's a lot that has already been done and there's a lot going on to help people who have mental health difficulties. But we're adding additional stuff to that obviously," he told CBC News on Tuesday.

"There are certain populations with persistent and sometimes severe mental illness so we are already increasing money into that area and we're doing that party by also hiring or by increasing our workforce so that these assertive community treatment teams are bolstered, if you will."

The waiting list for assertive community treatment is about 12 months.

'Absolute hell' waiting for help

Dr. Lloyd Maybaum, a forensic psychiatrist based at Calgary's Peter Lougheed Centre, said that's only a start since the ACT teams deal with only a small percentage of Alberta's mental health patients.

"The ACT team is just one out of many, many teams and I just don't get a sense that there's a grand scheme or plan to affirmatively address the overall problems of wait lists in mental health," he told CBC News.

Diane, a Calgary woman with borderline personality disorder, has been waiting almost a year for therapy. Struggling with addictions and mood swings, she has been in and out of hospital five times for cutting herself and even breaking her own bones.

"It's been absolute hell. If it hadn't been for the friends that I have, I'd be dead. I can say that without a doubt," she said.

Few psychiatric beds

People in crisis often end up in regular medical patient beds simply because there are no psychiatric spots available, according to Donna Wilson, a nursing professor at the University of Alberta.

Wilson studied all hospital admissions in Alberta for the last two years and found most people who show up at ERs have mental health problems, but may not necessarily wind up in a psychiatric bed.

"Basically it's a holding pattern. I mean they're off the street. They're out of the family home where maybe they were a danger to themselves or others," said Wilson.

"But now they're basically being warehoused in an acute-care hospital and they're in a bed where someone with diabetes can't use, where somebody with heart problems can't use and what have you."

Diane Lantz, a nurse at the Peter Lougheed Centre, said that's not surprising.

"At some points, the emergency department is bursting at the seams and they just need to get patients out of that department and they will go to wherever they can get them a bed," she said.

"If you're looking after eight patients in a day, your main objective is to make sure they're getting their meds, that they're getting their physical care looked after, their tests, their procedures, and the psycho-social stuff might just get left till the end."