25 Mar 2025

11-year-old girl put in mental health facility after misidentification

From Checkpoint, 5:07 pm on 25 March 2025

A mental health advocate has slammed the misidentification of an 11-year-old girl as a missing 20-year-old mental health patient. The autistic and non-verbal girl was taken by police and admitted to a mental health facility in Hamilton on March 9, before reportedly being injected with an antipsychotic drug. The mix-up was only discovered when her mother reported her missing 12 hours later. Natalie Akoorie reports.