Hot spots of mental health crises

Abstract

Purpose A strong body of research has established the concentration of crime in a small number of street segments or “hot spots” throughout urban cities, but the spatial distribution of mental health-related calls for services is less well known. The extent to which these calls are concentrated on a small number of street segments, similar to traditional crime calls for service is understudied. The purpose of this paper is to examine the concentration of mental health calls and the spatial distribution of street segments with mental health calls to provide directions for law enforcement and place-based policing. Design/methodology/approach Using call for service data from a large city on the East coast, the current study examines whether mental health calls for service are concentrated on street segments, and tests spatial dispersion to whether these “mental health hot spots” are spread throughout the city or clustered in space. Finally, the authors explore the relationship between mental health calls and violent and drug calls by calculating the correlation and using a spatial point pattern test to determine if mental health calls are spatially similar to violent and drug calls. Findings The authors found that mental health calls are concentrated on street segments; specifically 22.4 percent of calls are located on 0.5 percent of city street segments. Additionally, these street segments are fairly dispersed throughout the city. When comparing the spatial similarity of mental health calls to violent and drug calls, they are highly correlated suggesting a relationship between the calls types, but the location of mental health calls appears to be different from violet and drug calls. Originality/value Very few studies have examined the location of mental health calls and whether they are concentrated in small areas similar to crime, but such research can provide police officers new approaches to working with people with mental health problems. The police are the primary emergency response for calls involving someone with a mental illness or experiencing a mental health crisis and the authors provide suggestions for policing that draw from strategies used in hot spot policing and mental health responses, like CIT, to address challenges of modern policing and working with people with mental health problems.

Examining the Spatial Concentration of Mental Health Calls for Police Service in a Small City

“…In total, this subset includes 3,262 calls for service, thus comprising 0.89% of all calls made to the Barrie Police Service between 2014 and 2019. This finding is within the 0.50 to 3.48% range of previous work (Hodgkinson & Andresen, 2019;Vaughan et al, 2016White & Goldberg, 2018).…”

“…Relative to jurisdictions in previous research on the spatial concentration of PwPMI calls, Barrie is the smallest jurisdiction based on land area (Vaughan et al, 2016(Vaughan et al, , 2019White & Goldberg, 2018), has the fewest number of dissemination areas (Hodgkinson & Andresen, 2019;Vaughan et al, 2016Vaughan et al, , 2019see Vaughan et al, 2018 for excpetion), and the fewest number of street segments (Hodgkinson & Andresen, 2019).…”

“…In using street segments as the unit of spatial analysis -that is, both sides of the street from intersection-to-intersection (Eck & Weisburd, 1995) -previous research on the concentration of PwPMI calls for service has found that 50% of calls occur on a very small percentage of segments: between 0.30 and 3% (Hodgkinson & Andresen, 2019;Vaughan et al, 2016Vaughan et al, , 2019White & Goldberg, 2018). This same work as also found that, although PwPMI calls are highly concentrated, the calls are dispersed within that concentration.…”

“…This same work as also found that, although PwPMI calls are highly concentrated, the calls are dispersed within that concentration. In other words, PwPMI calls for service tend to cluster in multiple hot spots that are spread out across the jurisdiction (Hodgkinson & Andresen, 2019;Vaughan et al, 2016;White & Goldberg, 2018). Further, PwPMI calls for service have also been found to be highly concentrated at larger spatial units (Vaughan et al, 2019).…”

Perspectives of people with mental health problems at hot spots: Attitudes and perceptions of safety, crime, and the police

“…These findings have been found for crime generally (e.g. see Weisburd, 2015;Weisburd, Hinkle, Famega, & Ready, 2011) and also with specific types of crime such as drug markets (Weisburd & Green, 1995;Weisburd & Mazerolle, 2000), juvenile crime (Weisburd, Morris, & Groff, 2009), gun violence (Braga, Papachristos, & Hureau, 2014), and mental health related calls (White & Goldberg, 2018). Furthermore, a recent study found that individuals who live in violent crime hot spots are more likely to have depression and/or PTSD ; see also .…”