Police perspectives on responding to mentally ill people in crisis: perceptions of program effectiveness

Abstract

In this study, we sampled sworn police officers from three law enforcement agencies (n=452), each of which had different system responses to mentally ill people in crisis. One department relies on field assistance from a mobile mental health crisis team, a second has a team of officers specially trained in crisis intervention and management of mentally ill people in crisis, and a third has a team of in‐house social workers to assist in responding to calls. Calls involving mentally ill people in crisis appear to be frequent and are perceived by most of the officers to pose a significant problem for the department; however, most officers reported feeling well prepared to handle these calls. Generally, officers from the jurisdiction with a specialized team of officers rated their program as being highly effective in meeting the needs of mentally ill people in crisis, keeping mentally ill people out of jail, minimizing the amount of time officers spend on these calls, and maintaining community safety. Officers from departments relying on a mobile crisis unit (MCU) and on police‐based social workers both rated their programs as being moderately effective on each of these dimensions except for minimizing officer time on these calls where the MCU had significantly lower ratings. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Getting "to the Point"

“…This could be, in part, due to a lack of cooperation between mental health systems and police. In a study of police perspectives on responding to mentally ill individuals in crisis, less than half of the officers reported that their mental health systems or emergency rooms were moderately or very helpful (Borum, Deane, Steadman & Morrissey, 1998). The lack of cooperation from emergency room staff may be a result of unavailability of resources to manage psychiatric patients.…”

Police officers' perceptions and experiences with mentally disordered suspects

“…Research conducted in the USA has explored police officers' perspectives when responding to mentally disordered individuals in crisis (Borum, Deane, Steadman, & Morrisey 1998;Watson, Corrigan, & Ottati, 2004). Results indicate that whilst specialist officers trained in Crisis Intervention Teams (CIT) feel most prepared to deal with calls involving mental disorder, all police officers develop frames of reference or 'schemas' which guides how they may subsequently understand and respond to situations involving MD individuals.…”

Policing, Crime and Mental Illness in England and Wales: Insights from the Literature

“…Noga et al (2016) has established that despite the mentally ill being in daily contact with the UK police, officers have underdeveloped links with mental health and social care services. Police officers are provided with little or no training in the identification and management of mental illness, making them highly dependent on the support of partner agencies (Adebowale, 2013;Borum, Deane, Steadman, Morrissey, & Williams Deane, 1998;Cummings & Jones, 2010;Mind & Victim Support, 2013). This has potentially significant consequences for the safety of both officers and vulnerable detainees (Adebowale, 2013;Krameddine, Demarco, Hassel, & Silverstone, 2013).…”