The Met police have planned to stop attending emergency mental health incidents. They will only attend where there is an “immediate threat to life”. This move has been decided due to a rise in the number of mental health incidents being dealt with by police in the past 5 years. The argument is this decision will free up officers for other areas of their work. So is this a good or a bad thing?
In some ways, the police dealing with mental health crises can be detrimental and counterintuitive. It is not necessarily what they are trained to do, and so they won’t always act in the most supportive way towards people experiencing a mental health crisis. Particularly when dealing with sectioning individuals, the concept of taking someone to hospital in a police car is a problematic one. At a time when people need to feel supported and looked after, being taken away in a police car can add to existing distress and lead to ongoing stigma. However, in an emergency situation, the police are often the first port of call for many people. Being taken to hospital in a police car is better than not being taken at all if someone is in need.
There is the argument that police officers spending up to 30 hours looking after someone in a crisis while a space is found in a mental health hospital are not the correctly trained people to do this. However, if police are not available to do this, there needs to be more provision of mental health professionals who can. It is simply not a solution to take away the support of the police without anyone to replace them, especially when mental health services are so busy and in high demand. The government announced a £150m investment in January to improve NHS provision for people in a mental health crisis. They have said this will allow the procurement of 90 new mental health ambulances. However, this will take time and does not increase the number of healthcare professionals available to support people being taken to hospital.
The Met introduced a ‘Right Care, Right Person’ (RCRP) scheme in 2020 to ensure mental health crises are handled by mental health professionals, which ideally reduced demand on all services. Their argument is that this should help when police stop taking mental health calls. However, there is still a significant strain on mental health services, and the police taking fewer mental health crisis calls will surely worsen this. We need more focus on increasing and improving mental health crisis care, and mental health care in general. If we have more support as individuals before we reach a crisis point, there will be less strain along the line in terms of crisis management and support.
If you or someone you know is experiencing a mental health crisis, there is help available. Please contact these professionals if you need support:
If your situation is an emergency please call 999 to be directed to the correct help.
Your GP may be able to provide an emergency appointment.
The Mind website provides helpline numbers for those in crisis
For information about going to hospital for mental health click here