Psychoses and schizophrenia are dramatically overrepresented in cases where police resort to using force. Situational characteristics evident in the encounters are suggestive of a sub-group of people with mental disorders presenting with aggressive and otherwise problematic behaviours coupled with histories of criminal offending; this presents significant ongoing challenges for the police.

This paper considers the application of principles widely used to conceptualise and address violent and aggressive behaviour in psychiatric settings and examines if and to what extent they may be applicable to the police resolution of community-based mental health crisis encounters. It suggests that police should distill the significant accumulated practical wisdom available within its ranks to inform the beginnings of an evidence-based approach regarding effective resolution of such incidents. These can then be further validated within the frameworks of interpersonal theory and enhanced therapeutic communication style recommended in psychiatric settings to help better equip police with a suite of evidence-based tools when encountering such situations.

The significant over-representation of Axis I disorders, including severe mental disorders of psychosis and schizophrenia, is of considerable concern for both the police and the mental health providers. Functional interagency partnerships and police training on how to interact with people in distress are recommended to address the overrepresentation of mentally ill persons in these encounters.

Although a number of factors have been examined in relation to their effect on the prevalence and characteristics of police use of force, studies examining whether the person appeared to be mentally ill during the incident are lacking. Police recorded that 306 (7.2%) of the 4,267 people on whom they used force in Victoria, Australia, between 1995 and 2008 appeared to have a mental disorder. This group was more likely to threaten or use weapons on police and to have weapons used or threatened against them by police, as compared to those not deemed by police to be mentally disordered. Increased emphasis on communication and verbal deescalation tactics during police training and practice as well as proactive broader system-level changes should be implemented between police and mental health services to enable more effective management of these incidents to reduce the need to resort to increased use of force to resolve them.