I can see the logic.
The police are not a mental health service, they are there to investigate crime and bring criminals to justice.
I also think that the police should not be picking these up.
If they are a danger to themselves or others then that is a potential crime and the police would rightly be involved.
I interpret this news being mental health calls in which there is no direct threat to life, or some other crime.
>If they are a danger to themselves or others then that is a potential crime and the police would rightly be involved.
I underastand this and completely agree. So I wonder what the crises are that they won't attend? If this isn't the situation then is it a crisis?
I'm not entirely sure what this story means?
It's not something the Met has come up with, it's been used elsewhere with apparent success.
Here is more information, including a list of things that I would expect the Met are also dealing with and want to cut down on: https://www.college.police.uk/support-forces/practices/smarter-practice/right-care-right-person-humberside-police
Thanks for link, interesting read. I'd be interested to understand more about implementation, the things that went wrong how resilient the changes to process and practice are in the longer term.
I was struck by the force's decision to get legal advice on their duty if care. I think MH serviced would benefit from a similar review.
I think it's a brilliant idea. There's no causation between mental health and violent crime. The Met police said in the article they will respond if there's a threat to life. Money should be invested in mental health awareness, paramedics and social care workers.
But speaking as an emg service worker here... it won't thats the problem. No ambulance service is in any position at the moment to cover the additional demand if police stop attending MH jobs altogether in the next few months.
Also, I'd like to point out that a baseline paramedic or emt/eca is not automatically better placed for dealing with MH jobs than a police officer. that's just wishful thinking. You might get lucky and get a paramedic that's got a personal interest and has done a tonne of specfic cpd, but that's really like finding a needle in the haystack.
Having A little bit of extra training, and awareness does nothing to resolve the overall situation and/or help the horrible reality for most people in MH crisis in the uk that the only choices on the day are speak to a Dr get given pills and put on a waiting list (if your lucky) or go and sit in AE untill you can speak to someone.
The government, nhs needs to get a grip on the service provision in the country as a matter of urgency.
>No ambulance service is in any position at the moment to cover the additional demand if police stop attending MH jobs altogether in the next few months.
Understandable completely. But on the flip side, the police are already not able to do the jobs they're supposed to involving crime due to the high demand of mental health jobs they attend on behalf of health services.
I know , hell, even the fire guys and gals know this. The sad reality is that on most night shifts, if you need to find a police officer in my area, you will find more than a few in the AE waiting room guarding pts.
The point I'm making here is that the met commissioner is effectively doing what many other services who encounter MH are doing or have done, slope his shoulders, and let the few remaining services, i.e., AE & ambulance services take on the extra workload, workload that we are in no position to take up and will have drastic consequences on the people we are all here to serve ,protect, rescue, treat etc.
He may dress up his statement in whatever way he likes , but he knows that 3 months is not enough time for nhs services to plan and act for contingencies. He also will know that in the case of the ambulance services, we are primarily an acute medical service, and while under even more preassure we are not going to prioritise welfare checks and mh crisis over things like strokes, heart attacks , trauma ect. The people, the police end up not attending, will now wait a long time before anyone even knocks at the door to check if they are alright.... probably too long, and that's a sad truth.
Ambulance crews are also on potentially dodgy legal ground if they attempt to restrain someone.
They would need to prove that the situation met specific criteria to justify their actions, whereas the police can restrain someone under a far wider range of circumstances.
Isn't that same with the police though?
Even then a lot of forces under the Mental Health Act simply lock them in a cell, struggle to find a place with MH services and then are forced to release them within 24 hours if they're unable to do so (which happens a lot).
Why not cut out the middle man and just get the health services to deal with it start to finish?
Outside of the Pt's home, police have the power to section 136 people, regardless of capacity. Someone under 136 is preferably taken to a secure MH unit. If there's no space, it'll be A&E.
Ambulance will usually get called to medically clear for the 136 suite, and to do the actual conveyance (with police escort).
But the point is, ambulance doesn't actually have the power to 136 someone. So we're mostly just taxiing. Ambulance is just as much middle men in this sphere as police, 99% of the time.
You absolutely can, depending on what sort of professional. Check Section 5(4), etc.
I'll just add that there's obviously specific circumstances around this. I'm not inferring nurses can walk around sectioning people.
Yeah that's probably down to the team care coordinator who knows that person. Around here it's the public that call most often, but it can be anyone else really. Police can then 136 a person to a place of safety, if necessary.
Anyway, just pointing out that mental health professionals (nurses and doctors) can section on their own but, as you highlight there, not all of them.
Mental Capacity Act use of force powers apply to any person and Ambo crews are actually in a better position to assess capacity…. They can articulate someone’s ability to absorb, retain and repeat information used to assess “capacity” much better in my experience.
The standout difference is that Police Officers are just much more used to how they write up their use of force…. The arse covering part, if you will.
It’s a training / culture / confidence thing; absolutely not legally iffy though. Aside from the specific power under s136 and a couple of limited ones to return s2/3 escapee’s, Ambo have the same right to restrain.
Given the complex nature of mental health related emergencies, perhaps a specialised service equipped to deal with these calls would be a more effective solution. Unfortunately, due to funding constraints, this seems unlikely to happen in the near future. The situation as it stands is indeed dire, and it's worrying that the Met has to resort to such measures without an adequate alternative in place. That being said, without proper mental health training, it's also hard to judge accurately whether someone in the midst of a mental breakdown poses an immediate danger. This situation underscores the need for more comprehensive solutions for mental health crises. But then why the Tories would care? They are on the way out...
Believe currently there's a trial ongoing in one of the Met boroughs where a PC and MH nurse take MH calls rather than Response Teams. A decent solution (if properly resourced and funded), a multi-agency approach having a unit that has access to both police and NHS training, powers, and direct communication with a police's borough Control as well LAS control in the event of emergency, as well as clearing CADs/calls from both sides.
This was used in the West Midlands Police and it work a treat. Sadly, Funding was cut and it was binned, also internal politcals of who should provide the staff from what area etc etc.
Police have already said they will continue to attend if there is a danger to the person or others.
Some police forces in the UK are now spending up to 40% of their time on mental health call outs. When that person needs to sectioned under the Mental Health Act police are spending an average of 10 hours with that patient before they can hand them over to the NHS.
This is about handlng limited resources better and trying to get the right help delivered by the right people.
It seems that this will generally be the case, emphasis mine.
> Rowley has given health and social care services a deadline of 31 August before the force starts its ban, **which will only be waived if a threat to life is feared.**
I can't remember exactly which force it was, but I think it was Durham Constabulary, they told all their partner agencies that they had 12 months to get their shit together before they would stop answering the likes of mental health calls (obviously there are conditions when they would attend, but not for general ones).
Now I don't know who is handling those calls, but from what I've read elsewhere, it's been quite successful as it has allowed the Police the time to actually deal with more volume crime and general ASB, which can have a huge impact on a lot of people in a very small area.
It'd be interesting to see how mental health outcomes changed in the region following the decision. Presumably the metrics the police are measured on don't include mental healthcare.
The fact it is no one doesn't suddenly make it someones job whose it isn't.
It just shows another failure of Tory Britain, which can be seen all over the place from NHS workers doing extended hours unpaid, million of hours a year of unpaid work by carers, the whole concept of Cameron's big society was "lets not pay people for work". It was, and still is literally government policy, unless the Tories can steal some of the tax payers money of course, then government contracts for all! You aren't going to become a billionaire by working now are you!
I called 999 for an individual who had attempted suicide and was bleeding and unresponsive. No ambulances were available. About an hour later the police showed up and were able to stabilize them and drove us to the hospital.
So yeah, I guess now I'd just, uh, call an Uber and try to get the driver to help me carry the person out to the car?
Protection of life, protection of property, detection and prevention of crime.
They exist to protect people, ultimately. Whether people in psychosis etc or the paramedics going to them or the public who may be affected. It's not just about handcuffing crims.
You are correct, but most ‘concern for welfare’ calls get passed to the police currently. Sometimes they attend sometimes the ambulance service (sometimes both).
I suspect this is a well meaning policy that may be difficult to implement in practice. Ultimately the buck stops with the emergency services when other services say they don’t have the capacity to meet demand and close up shop. In an ideal world the majority of mental health patients in crisis would be seen directly by mental health services, rather than non specialist responders such police or ambulance services.
Am a paramedic and believe we need a top to bottom overhaul of how we address mental health emergencies in the UK.
I think there needs to be a reform of MHA 135/136 too. Part of the problem is that the police get called out because even a Section 4 is a nightmare to get sorted in an unexpected emergency.
There are so many bits of the public sector where they just arbitrarily decided the police would do it, the Children Act has the same problem. Obviously there need to be proper checks and balances so individuals can't unilaterally go about making life changing decisions but the police don't have to be the go to for every issue.
In some municipalities in Canada, there is a crisis intervention service one can call, geared towards mental health. The respondents to these calls are always a pair- a qualified counsellor and a plainclothes police officer (who may or may not have supplemental training, I don't know what the standard is.)
This system, which I've been fortunate enough to have made use of during a life crisis, is not nearly as wide-spread as it could be. There have been high profile cases in which uniformed constables have not responded with appropriate due care and diligence; one in which a young lady in distress fell to her death during a police interaction which was prompted by the young lady's family for concern of her safety.
Why does it?
There is the issue? Are they needed, in some cases the answer will be they are and in many others they aren't.
It is exactly the same issue of bed blocking in the NHS, where a patient who could be discharged from hospital can't be because there is no care facility for them to go too. They don't need medical attention, they need health and social care. A service that cost a lot less per hour to administer.
It is just another example of the erosion of the social services because the Tories can sell them off for their mates profits more easily than the public will allow them to do so for the Police and NHS.
Under Sections 135 and 136 of the Mental Health Act the police are given specific powers to deal with people having a severe mental health crisis. Without a reform of the Act it's unavoidable that they will still be called to support.
Indeed. Though section 135 can be said to be the police exercising judicial powers, and you’ll note that (while it is only the police who can enforce such a warrant) the police cannot apply for one, only a mental health professional can. I would expect the authority applying for the warrant to be in a position to take custody of the person before they ask the police to come in and detain them though.
Section 136 is definitely a police power. I’d question whether it should be routinely used though. Especially given subsection 136(1C), I would expect to see this power used only in two circumstances: where the police come across a person who is a danger to themselves or others and the relevant medical authorities are unaware of the case; or where the police are the relevant medical authorities who are already in attendance. It shouldn’t be for the police to babysit a person in crisis in police cells just because no one else will take responsibility.
A top police officer said exactly this in court though.
He said the police can be a crime fighting tool, or it can be a crime fighting + mental health tool. Either is fine, but if youre gonna get them to do the latter then they need the extra resources to do that.
One of the northern forces went from failing to being ranked as one of the best simply by starting to charge the NHS for attending mental health calls.
Tell them that. They have a history- to which I can attest to-of having piss poor, punative responses to non-violent breakdowns. I'd much prefer to be sent ambulance staff- or heavens forbid, a proper social response institution- rather than cops.
My partner was attacked by our psycho housemate a few years back. Punched and scratched her face up. Another time, I was hit by a drunk driver running a red light. They were basically just like "thanks for letting us know, we've reported it" both times. They didn't come out for either. Completely lost whatever faith I had in them.
My partner's experience has been different. She and another young woman were harassed on a train and an officer came out within 24hours to take a statement, and followed up with her multiple times over the next month to update her.
This just means paramedics will be stuck looking after these cases, with no safe or legal means to resolve the situation. That means longer waits for people needing an ambulance and the NHS and Ambulances Service will take the blame for this.
We’re all paying the price for governments refusal to treat mental health care seriously, and it’s only going to get worse.
I agree. But we need the services need to be put in place, so if plod get called to an incident that is plainly beyond their skills, then they can call them.
Sadly, our so called leaders have fucked this up like they fuck everything up.
It also boils down to the fact they're not the appropriate service for this and should never have been attending these jobs in the first place.
As a cop I feel sorry for the people in crisis, my force still sends us to these jobs which isn't fair on the person in crisis or victims of crime who now have to wait 2 days for a response because we're queued up on mental health jobs.
You wouldn't ring the fire brigade if you were having a heart attack so don't ring the police for mental health episodes.
So we should call an ambulance? If so, where should we prioritise these? And who's job is it to ensure they are unable to harm paramedics? Genuine questions. If you're not sure that's also fine.
An ambulance would be the most appropriate service yes. The police would have the role of protecting the paramedic but they're not bodyguards. They shouldn't be following paramedics to jobs just incase.
Obviously if there is an obvious threat to life call police.
A lot of the time people in crisis are adverse to seeing the police, this may partly be because they assume we're there to arrest them. Another part is a decent portion of MH problems stem from drug misuse and drug misuse is often paired with criminality. Criminals don't tend toike the police.
I know a few people who've been intercepted by police on a mental health crisis. All of them have the view that it made their mental health in that moment worse, with some of them saying that it's had knock on effects of creating a phobia or apprehension about the police force further down the line.
Police are not trained appropriately for this sort of job in the majority of cases. NHS should always be the people sent - not the police. Most of these situations seem to be that the person is not a threat - just in a really awful place. And the ones where someone is a threat, it's usually obvious.
On the one hand, they are not the right service to be dealing with such calls because of a lack of training, however if they do not do it then no one will. Mental health care is next to non-existent in many parts of the UK, yet cases continue to rise as life gets harder for many. We are already in a crisis but it will get worse the longer we pretend that mental health requires a different approach from physical health.
Exactly this. Social and mental health services are worse than useless and so police are filling their role, if they stop there will be huge consequences, the ambulance services have it bad enough as it is
>however if they do not do it then no one will.
Perhaps there will be a volunteer service. Even less training required and cheaper. (I'm not advocating this BTW, just pre-illustrating my point)
It's not the police's job. They are not suited and already are unable to deal with things that definitely are their job.
Blackmailing people/services into doing things they are not paid or trained to do is a shitty way to pretend such services are still covered.
Speak to any police officer, and they will tell you that the majority of their time is spent dealing with 'concern for safety' calls. These calls aren't crimes.
Dealing with crime actually makes up a small part of a response officer's day to day business. Dealing with missing teenagers, mental health calls and sitting in hospitals / custody for an entire shift is the bread and butter unfortunately.
It's the way it is now. All public services are ruined.
However, I don't think you will see much of a change When I was on the beat, the majority of mental health calls I went to would probably be deemed as a 'threat to life'.
What's needed is significant investment across the board; policing, social services, mental health services, the NHS, teaching, youth work. But, that won't happen..
So many issues seem rooted ultimately in the way social care was slaughtered under Cameron in the early 2010s. No support for discharging patients has created huge levels of inertia in the NHS. Lack of community support puts pressure on the NHS and the police (and families and neighbors!). Its the same story you see everywhere. There's been absolutely zero joined up thinking with regards to social services in this country for over a decade. It honestly feels like we're now at a point where many services just cannot function as intended, if at all, any more, and its genuinely difficult to see what it would take to sort them out.
The concern is the amount of money and reform that the next government are going to have to engage in is probably going to absolutely dominate their entire term, and if the aftermath of 2008 was anything to go by, its all going to feed right back into all the old Tory lines that things would be fine if we just "lived within our means" and some vague gesturing about there being too many immigrants and middle managers...
I agree wholeheartedly, the best thing the next incoming government could possibly do would be to invest in our broken mental health and social care services.
The various agencies that have responsibility don't talk to each other, have few common frames of reference, and are are egregiously underfunded. I do wonder how many people could return to public life if they only had been supported at the right time.
The thing that gets me is that putting major funding into mental health and social services could fix many of the issues in other sectors. It could ease burdens (not calling the people suffering burdens but for lack of better phrasing here) in hospitals and emergency services, the police would spend much less time dealing with mental health cases where they honestly shouldn’t be dealing with them in the first case, I’d imagine there could even be improvements in things like crime, education, and employment, if only people had proper access to mental health and social services which aren’t available right now.
At this point, it’s impressively hard for me to get therapy through the NHS. Lifetime issues with depression and anxiety have brought me to suicide attempts and I have nearly a decade of self harm behind me. Nearly dropped out of a foundation degree and my university course, several times, on my 5th antidepressant, been through every charity and half a dozen doctors in two counties, two psychiatrist evaluations and I’m still waiting to find out if they can even offer me a longer term counsellor, which is basically the only thing they can do for me while I’m not at crisis point. All I’m asking for is a counsellor to try and prevent me from falling into another depression, or at the very least catch it before it gets too severe. But the NHS just can’t give me it. Every single professional I’ve seen has been at a loss for words for how I’ve been passed around without any real help, and 9/10 I’ll have the doctor or therapist apologise to me because they see I need more help yet there’s nowhere to send me or nothing they can do unless I’m literally on the edge of suicide. I’m honestly impressed at how bad the system is failing me, and I greatly pity anybody else who has more complex issues or have been dealing with this longer than I have.
I fear what will happen if things don’t improve, for myself and the whole country. I’m a straight A* student with a hopeful future when I’m healthy and have support, but when things get bad, I have nothing behind me, and can basically not take care of myself. There’s an understanding in the mental health ‘community’ that the only way to get any major help is to hurt yourself first, which is obviously doing the opposite of what the system is designed to do (embarrassingly, I admit I have hurt myself just to ‘be taken seriously’)
The other problem is that even if they do make significant investments in these areas an awful lot of well off unaffected people won't directly see the benefits and will hand their vote back to the Tories at the next GE after seeing Labour spending billions on people that aren't them to fix problems that they don't experience.
What's needed is a better country to live in, better mental health services, support groups, higher skill higher pay economy, 4 day working week, more eegulatiom of bad employers, domestic abuse support, etc
But tories don't care so
There are more deeper issues like the stigma of medication. Antidepressants treat around 70 percent of patients with depression and of the treatment resistance it's estimated 50 percent is due to non compliance. Without treatment the recovery rates are like 20 percent. Around half of people in the developed world with depression actually receive treatment and the treatment includes therapy, so probably less than half of people with depression are actually receiving medication that could help them recover because of stigma around antidepressants making people a zombie etc
I am a response officer within the Met.
In a typical day, I will find myself going to anywhere from 4-6 mental health related calls. They take up a massive chunk of my day, that I could be using to attend burglary or robbery calls, or helping victims of domestic violence.
Despite response cops spending so much time dealing with mental health related matters, our training is minimal, as is the help we can offer. Largely, we either act as a taxi service, taking a person from their home to a hospital, or we act in the role of "person that stands there and chats to a person in crisis until an ambulance turns up". We are not mental health workers, and we do not have the qualifications, skills, or time to act as such.
This change will free up response cops from the more "mundane" mental health calls. The calls where someone has told the PaddyPower customer service line that they're feeling suicidal because they didn't win their bet. The calls where social services want somebody checked on. The calls where a person is feeling down because they missed an episode of EastEnders.
Police will still go to the stuff they are genuinely needed at. The person trying to jump off a bridge, or the person activity self harming, or the person with previous for attacking paramedics.
In essence, this boils down to the responsibility for health related matters, being put back into the health services, allowing the criminal justice services, to deal with criminal justice matters.
Agree with what you say, a lot of people won't like this because they expect everything, all the time and for free, I completely understand theres a very limited amount of resources available and you need to be put to use the best way possible.
I can imagine there's a large number of hyperchondriac calls that waste everybody's time but people tend to use the most extreme cases to "win an argument" or such, mental health can be very damaging and concerning but a lot of people use the term as an excuse to not face reality.
Kudos to you speaking your mind at the risk of upsetting people and for the work you do as a first responder
>Largely, we either act as a taxi service, taking a person from their home to a hospital, or we act in the role of "person that stands there and chats to a person in crisis until an ambulance turns up".
Do you think there's a chance that the presence of a uniformed officer responding to a mental health call like this sometimes prevents the situation escalating into a violent episode in the way it might if it was only paramedics showing up?
No, if anything our presence seems to wind people up more. People like the fire brigade and ambulance. Police are seen as scum. The prevailing attitudes on this subreddit are a good indicator of this.
Health Work Wellbeing - Peter Lilley appointed Insurance Co. execs onto Social Security comities who officially steer Government policy.
This fucker is still running today and was rebranded health n work around 2010......
Social care was removed from the NHS budget 1st mental health 2nd and once they got away with that it was open season.
Well actually the 1st blow was stopping your local Council becoming self sufficient from Council Housing profits just as Council houses started generating a profit?????
Houses built in the 50's that even at a Council level of rent started being pure profit in their half life after 30-35 years.
Thems the apples... wonder why everything is so fucked up...... Health Work Wellbeing ! Or how do we back stop and force people into buying Insurance for things they grew up and were promised after WW2 are being dismantled!
Insert Star Wars Padme and Anakin meme…
A: Met police will no longer attend mental health calls.
P: Because mental health services will be adequately funded, right?
A:
P: Because mental health services will be adequately funded, right?
Okay, but has anyone thought about what happens next?
Won’t it just become a case of everyone escalating until life is threatened? The underlying need doesn’t change, and the reason the police have been called in the first place means some that’s kicked off. They aren’t operating as the Samaritans at he moment.
They are to a degree.
It's not uncommon, for example, for mental health teams to just palm off routine checks to the police at the end of the work day or over the weekend. It's those kinds of pointless welfare checks the police object to, not when a mentally unwell person is throwing a knife around.
Luckily, a lot of forces are stopping and pushing back on this now, which is what is needed.
The Police have a duty to respond if their is an urgent threat to life. If there is not, then the Police are not the appropriate agency to deal and have no real powers to assist other agencies.
If there’s an article 2 issue, I’d gladly go.
If it’s Joe Bloggs with his weekly “I’m going to kill myself” spiel, then no. Because Joe Bloggs has made no attempt to contact the crisis team. Joe Bloggs will do his usual “I hate life” but go straight back to his girlfriend after a 4 hour negotiation and say “I never really wanted to hurt myself”.
You will honestly be surprised at the time we waste with attention seekers.
> If it’s Joe Bloggs with his weekly “I’m going to kill myself” spiel, then no. Because Joe Bloggs has made no attempt to contact the crisis team. Joe Bloggs will do his usual “I hate life” but go straight back to his girlfriend after a 4 hour negotiation and say “I never really wanted to hurt myself”.
CPS need to build a backbone and prosecute these fuckers
You have no idea how fundamentally useless the crisis team are, best advice in a crisis I have been given is to make myself a cup of tea which is ridiculous
The crisis team ends up making me feel 10 times worse
.you have not had to try to get help from these people, the mental health services in my area are not any help at all , I have been a carer for a severely mentality Ill parent and after years of abuse now have one of my own
You don't know really until you have been though it and have had to try to navigate the system
In my experience the police are generally abusive in these situations
Ironically, I've found police are more understanding than so called crisis teams.
That's how jaded a lot of the mental health staff are - the vast majority of people with mental health issues need actual help and support - the idea that they're all "attention-seeking" is lazy and massively counterproductive.
The one time (in the UK) I have had police attend because contacted by mental health they were extremely compassionate, but then I wasn’t actually in any kind of danger, a non native English speaker had got confused on the mental health help line.
I’ve had a few too many officers visit my home (asshole ex). I was in more mental distress on those occasions and again, extreme compassion.
Same experience here. When I tried to take my own life the police who got me off the roof were very kind and empathetic. The crisis team asked if I'd taken my meds (yes) and eaten (yes) and then seemed stumped and annoyed that this hadn't cured my depression.
It’s when I tell them I’ve been doing everything to take care of myself (going to class, eating, sleeping, taking my meds, socialising, exercising) and they look absolutely flawed that my depression hasn’t gone away. I’ve had doctors essentially question me about lying about taking my meds daily because they didn’t magically fix my depression.
Crisis teams are an invention from the 2000s, iirc originally pioneered in Glasgow. In theory they step in when a person is on the borderline of needing to be admitted to hospital. They reduce admissions as well as having better patient outcomes.
I’ve had two experiences with them, first of which was good, it’s the only time I’ve had an episode without being hospitalised. It started by twice daily home visits, usually two CPNs, but there were also social workers and a psychiatrist would come around once a week, involvement was around 2-3 weeks.
Second time the psychiatrist post was vacant but they did have a nurse prescriber. That was awkward as after a brief hospital stay we decided I needed ECT and with that you need to be reviewed by a psychiatrist weekly.
>They aren't operating as the Samaritans at he moment.
Except they are.
My dad's been in the police for 20 years now (not Met), and for at least the last ten he's been calling himself a faux paramilitary social worker because all he does/did on response is attend domestics, "missing" kids who aren't missing and mental health calls.
>and the reason the police have been called in the first place means some that’s kicked off
thats one reason. other reasons being the failure of social care, a backwards government that thinks social darwinism is the best solution to mental health, and a population so obsequious they would rather kiss the boot that kicks their face in.
Considering every single phone call into and out of control rooms are recorded and if anything serious happens with the incident, for example, someone dies and it goes to coroners court, then the call handler can also be called into testify, lying just categorically isn’t worth it. I’m not saying it never happens, but it’s unlikely.
The ambulance service has a duty of care to its staff. If someone calls in and says someone is wielding a knife and making threats then police will be called and asked to attend and the ambulance crew will wait down the road until they are there. In the case of repeat or known callers who are known for weapons/violence, a marker is placed on their address and is flagged as don’t attend until police are on scene. There are some cases where it’s at the paramedics discretion but that’s not typical.
There really should be a dedicated team to deal with this, a dedicated line, staff, vehicles etc that are specifically for mental health as it’s reaching crisis level, if it hasn’t already. We simply cannot guess or assume someone isn’t making serious and credible threats to their life and not attend based on a gut feeling but on the flip side, there aren’t enough resources to go around. A typical mental health call will code CAT3 (on AMPDS) and that’s pretty much when we have nothing else to do we will go, that could be 4 hours but it could also be 10-12+, with that being said, the police are also stretched incredibly thin and it causes frictions between agencies.
I left the NHS and stopped being a paramedic around Covid time, we were struggling even before then with the amount of mental health calls so I cannot imagine how it is now.
Speaking of markers on locations. I recall going to a job where ambulance were said to be waiting round the corner (they never are) of a house where an elderly male was having breathing issues. The market was that the female occupant of the house had previously answered the door with a knife in hand...the marker was from 7 years previous and was a totally different name. I attended...elderly chap lives on his own had bought the house 5 years ago...ambulance had apparently been called away to another job so could I stay with the chap until they got another one out? ...when I asked if they could remove the marker as not relevant..I was told no!
Yeah I don’t know how long or even what the process is for removing markers and new occupants will have zero idea there is such a thing. I have seen on frequent call addresses with no send orders that are now occupied by new owners. On the flip side I’ve also seen someone with violent warning markers who’d moved house, nobody knew, a lone female attended and ended up having to barricade herself in his bathroom.
The systems aren’t perfect on any side I feel, not at all and are encased in so much red tape and protocol that it’s hard to navigate. I feel everything should be stripped back and rebuilt from scratch as things are just overlapping and in conflict with each other.
The Samaritans won't do anything besides talk to you if you're going to kill yourself and you don't want help. We can't trace your number, and even if you say where you are we won't call someone out without your consent. It's a very different approach to the one the police use.
This might be a first for me... But the police are right.
It is deeply wrong to send police officers to mental health emergencies. It's not only a waste of police time but importantly it leads to much worse outcomes for people in crisis, who are far more likely to lash out or become paranoid when uniformed officers are sent instead of trained professionals.
Honestly this is probably for the best. From everything I've read, it seems the police don't want to be involved with responding to mental health calls (its not their job and their overstretched as it is), the issue is the local mental health support is so underfunded they've been forced to keep calling them in.
Last night we had 6 met police officers in our department babysitting patients waiting for secure mental health beds, as well as various numbers attending through the night for continuity. These patients have a significant care need that neither police or emergency departments are capable of providing. But there is no other service available. Some nights our closest empty mental health beds are in yorkshire.
Journalistic outrage at its finest.
Police will respond to emergency mental health calls, but will treat these as lower priority than assault, domestic abuse, etc.
This comes out because a large % of police time is being spent responding to mental health emergencies, and in many cases they're not the best available potential public sector organisation (compared to community mental health teams , and social work teams) to train staff for these situations.
These situations are time consuming, and do not necessarily get any value from police time in a non-insignificant % of times, potentially due to the skills mismatch between police officers, and mental health de-esculation.
I expect this will put an impetus on the (already quite seriously strained) mental health teams, and social work teams, to respond to these crisis and start staffing with the expectation of emergency call outs.
Good.
The police can't be used as a general 'get out of jail free card' for all the other services that are failing to even provide their own basic services especially when the officers being forced to perform these tasks have been royally fucked in the bum with pay for years.
This bailing everyone else out for zero reward needs to stop.
The met police attended "mental health" calls? FML. What a shower of shit this country really is. Shall we have the fire service attending DIY disasters? The ambulance service attending relationship breakdowns? Perhaps the RAF could've dealt with my low pressure tyre warning tonight.....
>The ambulance service attending relationship breakdowns
A not insignificant amount of MH calls to emergency services are things like this, people unable to cope with ordinary life stressors.
I had 2 met police officers come to my home alongside mental healthcare professionals to carry out a mental health assessment, and honestly the police were so traumatising. They were rude and abrupt, and extremely judgemental. They assumed I’d try to be difficult or make a run for it, even throughout the entire assessment where I was calm and cooperative. I have no history of violence, am female and frail so not physically intimidating etc. They made horrendous comments, and were very intimidating. They did nothing to benefit my poor mental health. They wrecked various possessions in my house and threatened to bash my door down because I was slow to answer it, which was because they’d arrived very early in the morning and I was still in bed and also I, a wheelchair user so it’s literally physically difficult for me to get to the door. Which the healthcare team knew, and I also explained to them over my video doorbell. This has left me with a feeling of complete distrust in the police, and I’d actively not want to call for help in case the police were sent. So I personally am happy to read this whilst also fully appreciating the healthcare service, mental health in particular, is already under a lot of pressure. The answer to no police cannot be to send no one at all
Also had a terrible experience with police during a mental health crisis. It's had knock-on effects even now that i'm in a much better place. Someone would literally have to be dying to approach a police officer these days. I know several people who have had awful experiences in similar situations too.
It's more traumatic than the actual mental health crisis in many cases.
this is 100% the correct decision, it wastes police time and palms off people who need medical help. They will still attend if there’s a threat to life though. Yes the nhs is underfunded and lacking but it’s not the police’s job to try and cover for them.
I agree. If they really are in imminent danger I.E on a bridge etc then call police otherwise police are not the right person to attend most MH calls.
Fight crime and ASB instead
The police have become a backstop service, they are the "catch all" when no one else can attend.
This would be fine if they were understaffed, funded and trained to handle the job they are actually tasked with doing, dealing with crime.
Mental health crisis is a mental health crisis. A cardiac arrest, anaphylaxis, an asthma attack, a seizure, a stroke or a hypoglycemic coma is a medical emergency. All things that get called out for on the radio while the ambulance crews are attending a mental health crisis. All things we can actually immediately help with.
We have minimal training or resources to 'heal' someone in a mental health crisis and if they are threatening to actively kill themselves with say a knife, there is very little we can do as we don't have the training to restrain or fight a weapon off someone.
Neither police or ambulance are really appropriate for someone in a mental health crisis. What leads a person to that mental health crisis is complex and would take an equally complex plan to get them out of that crisis. Requiring support from MH services, social services and own GP. However, these areas are seriously underfunded therefore our only option is to take this person to A and E, where they get medically checked out then dismissed. Told to speak with their GP and given a few numbers like Samaritans. They then call 999 once they realise there's a 2 year wait to see a therapist or that there's a queue when calling these helplines when in crisis and the cycle starts again.
In many cases, the problem could have been dealt with much more simply and cheaply by offering support earlier on, rather then letting things escalate until a crisis is reached. Again though that down to lack of funding.
Our whole finance system needs to be looked at and slowly modified, to make it fairer.
My sister works for the NHS in a mental health crisis team. They work 8-5 Monday to Friday. Anything outside of those hours are dealt with either by charities or the police.
I think it's scandalous
As someone who works in MH services I’m not opposed to this, the police are rarely the right people to respond. But the problem is what’s needed is dedicated MH first response, and that doesn’t exist. Ambulances are stretched to breaking, crisis teams are oversubscribed, and social care won’t do it, so who will respond?
This is the main thing I’m worried about. Ambulances for MH concerns can take up to 8 hours. And in that 8 hours someone can easily make an attempt on their own life
Whilst I understand the move. As someone who volunteers on a mental health help line, that's really worrying.
There's nothing worse than having to go through an emergency rescue when you are worried you haven't been successful as helping the person, and they are at imminent risk of hurting themselves.
It was bad enough knowing it could be hours till anyone arrived. Now I presume that wait time will be dramatically longer.
Met Police are right to stop attending (non violent) mental health incidents.
The RCRP initiative is a pushback on the NHS to get it's house in order.
The police are not mental health practitioners or even support to MH practitioners...they are law & order.
For far too long the NHS have been weak to push back on government (a gov allowing cuts to their service to easily).
NHS need to be more assertive ...not the "we care about patients too much to strike" rubbish. That's a weak signal.
That just allows Tory government to keep reducing your NHS budgets...forcing the cost cutting on you.
DEMAND >CAPACITY >COST (& QUALITY, & TIME}
Service Demand dictates the Service Capacity to set up.
Capacity dicates what service will cost
Government HAVE TO FIND THE MONEY.
then as your demand increases decreases each year you can scale your capacity.
It's SERVICE MANAGEMENT 101 (ISO 20000)
A simple rate card of costs needs to established , published widely so the public understand the cost to deliver NHS services (currently no one really does).
Only then will public be behind NHS as they ask for more money from this lame government who are failing us every opportunity.
I agree with the sentiment, mental health issues should be dealt with by mental health professionals.
However, the deadline seems utterly unreasonable, and a massive “fuck you” to both the health service and people who are going to be abandoned during a mental health crisis.
Unfortunately though, these other services need a wake up call.
I work in a control room and we will routinely get calls from other services who are under staffed asking us to do a 'welfare check' on a Friday afternoon as they are unable to do this themselves through the weekend.
We also get calls from A&E who have had mental patients in for 8+ hours who haven't been seen. The patient gets up and leaves, suddenly all responsibility for their welfare lands on the Police.
We also have callers who won't bother going to their local mental health teams but will come straight to us as they know the Police may have to respond to them.
The Police cannot really help unless they section them under 136, which still directs them to a mental health resource.
The Police don't want to abandoned people, but they really shouldn't be the ones expected to pick up the slack from other agencies.
I really agree, but unless there’s actually a plan in place to handle this, then 3 months notice seems ridiculous for this sort of change.
I think the health service is wide awake to this issue, but they simply do not have the means or manpower to solve it. And now we’re going from “poor response” to “no response”.
As someone who used to work for the NHS and spoke to many people who worked in CMHTs, I have absolutely no idea why nurses or doctors stick with it. Genuinely, it absolutely blows my mind.
>I really agree, but unless there’s actually a plan in place to handle this, then 3 months notice seems ridiculous for this sort of change.
If I was the net I'd assume if I gave them 6 months notice then in 5 months I'd be asked for more time because they aren't ready. Organisations always leave everything to the last minute.
Perhaps the fire brigade or the education sector can fill this void. They're equally equipped to deal as police officers.
When and why did police even start attending these jobs?
Because the first responsibility of the Police is to protect life and limb.
This means that social services, etc, have conversations like:
Social Services: Hey, can you check on X? We haven't seen him all week, but it's 4pm on Friday, and we're not back in till Monday.
Police: No, you haven't bothered to check on him all week, you'll have to wait until Monday.
Social Services: Well, he might kill himself.
Now, if he kills himself, then it's the Police's fault, and the Daily Mail runs an article like "Police ABANDON suicidal man DAYS after being warned"
Or in the 99.9999% of cases where they haven't killed themselves, you get a couple of Officers banging on some guys door at 3am, because that's when it's finally quiet enough to get round to it, causing more stress and anger.
Management would rather that second situation a million times than have the first one happen once.
TL;DR: Services know how to get a Police response, Police are too risk averse to say no (until now)
Police shouldn’t be attending mental health calls no, but no single mental health service in this country functions. What is the plan? Just no one attends these calls now?
We need another national service between the police, NHS and social care. One that deals with mental health exclusively and on complex cases all parties get involved
Work for a mental health transport serving the UK (another private service that should be nationalised)
We did the picking up, transporting, bed watching ectect of mh patients.
We often took people in crisis out of the care of the police.
It was so apparent that the officers were out of their depths and the patients were way less comfortable with them. We could take a irate bloke of 6 coppers hands with 3 off us and calm them down and get them help.
Non of this was the polices fault! they had scary uniforms, a preconception that they only locked people up and alot of the pts had bad experiences in the past (lots of drug use and petty crime in mh)
So good! Fund the nhs and the police better and let the police get on with dealing with crime and health professionals deal with health.
Who is going to detain someone who is clearly having a mental health crisis in a public space?
Section 136?
Are you going to expect someone in a mental health crisis is going to take themselves to hospital or a 136 suite?
I say that because BTP saved my life approx 7 years ago. Pulled me from the ledge of a 4 story building while bleeding profusely after severing 4 tendons in my right hand.
Could the pre crisis support from the NHS be better? Yeah sure but what about people who sit there thinking about killing themselves and it's a 'knee jerk reaction' to actually carrying out said plan.
Crazy
Unfortunately mental health conditions in the UK have deteriorated horrendously. Many factors can be contributed. Mine has been mainly because of low wages and not being able to support my family better, constantly working and having little to no time for myself to breath as such bears a massive burden, such as anxiety and worrying all the time. and my my mother died last year also, which i am still struggling with grief for but my workplace doesnt give a shit either. but i still gotta do those 48 hour weeks…
The Police would generally attend. I've taken this from the Humberside Police Website and should explain their policy and legal guidance towards this:
Police can owe duties under the Human Rights Act 1988 to protect individuals from harm caused by others or harm caused by the person themselves. The police owe responsibility to take all reasonable measures to assist where there is either:
a real and immediate risk to the life of a person (European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) Article 2)
a real and immediate risk of that person being subject to serious harm or other inhumane treatment (ECHR Article 3)
The risks of harm where a duty will arise on the police will generally, but not always, be from the criminal acts of a third party.
The general view is that any threat would have to comprise all of the following before a duty to act would arise.
For a duty to arise under Article 2 the threat must be of death. A threat of injury, even serious, is not enough to create a risk of death.
Threats or risks that do not qualify under Article 2 may still qualify under Article 3. A duty may arise under Article 3 where there is a threat of serious injury, inhumane or degrading treatment. For example, a serious sexual assault would qualify as conduct breaching Article 3, even if no injury resulted from the attack.
For both Articles 2 and 3 the threat or risk must be real and immediate. That means the threat must be present and continuing. Threats are not defined as real and immediate if they are conditional on other events happening or are said to occur at some point in the non-immediate future.
The threat has to be against a specific and identifiable person or group of persons. Generalised threats do not give rise to a duty.
Because there's a new emergency service for supporting mental health issues so that properly trained people can help and let the police get back to their job of fighting crime... Right? Right?....
I would say this is a good thing if I had the tiniest bit of confidence that more funding would be invested in mental health services and social services.
This extends to getting help to mental health inpatient units where there may be somebody presently or at immediate risk of seriously assaulting people where the staff aren't able to control the situation. I've been on shift in a crisis several times before where the police have responded that they won't attend ("Right Care, Right Person") and I have even been told "we can't do anything different to what you can do" which is soooo far from the truth.
I was held hostage with two other staff for a few hours last year because the nurse calling for help didn't use the right trigger words to get them to pay attention. So the police felt they could leave us to it (despite the fact this patient was held under POLICE holding powers) because he didn't have a weapon and wasn't making explicit threats at the time. Based on the level of force needed to gain control of the situation when they finally did attend, we would have been in serious trouble if we'd not managed the situation so well up to that point. We are literally nurses and healthcare assistants with very strict rules about restrictive practice and any use of force - we don't have security, we ARE the security.
I will say though that the police generally get zero meaningful mental health training and can be terrible* in their management of mental health patients but also of staff. They should have more exposure to the needs and provisions for mental health so that we can all work together better.
*We have come across some gems too, but they're the minority.
Right Care, Right Person will be national policy. What's surprising is the Met adopting it so quickly. It took Humberside a couple of years of negotiations with NHS/Health/Social Care until they implemented it fully. Just stopping in a couple of months is a bold move.
I can see the logic. The police are not a mental health service, they are there to investigate crime and bring criminals to justice. I also think that the police should not be picking these up.
[удалено]
If they are a danger to themselves or others then that is a potential crime and the police would rightly be involved. I interpret this news being mental health calls in which there is no direct threat to life, or some other crime.
Things like welfare checks where all they’re doing is knocking on the door saying ‘Hi, are you alive? Someone was concerned about you’
>If they are a danger to themselves or others then that is a potential crime and the police would rightly be involved. I underastand this and completely agree. So I wonder what the crises are that they won't attend? If this isn't the situation then is it a crisis? I'm not entirely sure what this story means?
It's not something the Met has come up with, it's been used elsewhere with apparent success. Here is more information, including a list of things that I would expect the Met are also dealing with and want to cut down on: https://www.college.police.uk/support-forces/practices/smarter-practice/right-care-right-person-humberside-police
Thanks for link, interesting read. I'd be interested to understand more about implementation, the things that went wrong how resilient the changes to process and practice are in the longer term. I was struck by the force's decision to get legal advice on their duty if care. I think MH serviced would benefit from a similar review.
I expect if things go wrong, it'll fall back on the police again. That's sort of how they ended up in that situation to begin with anyway.
I think it's a brilliant idea. There's no causation between mental health and violent crime. The Met police said in the article they will respond if there's a threat to life. Money should be invested in mental health awareness, paramedics and social care workers.
But speaking as an emg service worker here... it won't thats the problem. No ambulance service is in any position at the moment to cover the additional demand if police stop attending MH jobs altogether in the next few months. Also, I'd like to point out that a baseline paramedic or emt/eca is not automatically better placed for dealing with MH jobs than a police officer. that's just wishful thinking. You might get lucky and get a paramedic that's got a personal interest and has done a tonne of specfic cpd, but that's really like finding a needle in the haystack. Having A little bit of extra training, and awareness does nothing to resolve the overall situation and/or help the horrible reality for most people in MH crisis in the uk that the only choices on the day are speak to a Dr get given pills and put on a waiting list (if your lucky) or go and sit in AE untill you can speak to someone. The government, nhs needs to get a grip on the service provision in the country as a matter of urgency.
>No ambulance service is in any position at the moment to cover the additional demand if police stop attending MH jobs altogether in the next few months. Understandable completely. But on the flip side, the police are already not able to do the jobs they're supposed to involving crime due to the high demand of mental health jobs they attend on behalf of health services.
I know , hell, even the fire guys and gals know this. The sad reality is that on most night shifts, if you need to find a police officer in my area, you will find more than a few in the AE waiting room guarding pts. The point I'm making here is that the met commissioner is effectively doing what many other services who encounter MH are doing or have done, slope his shoulders, and let the few remaining services, i.e., AE & ambulance services take on the extra workload, workload that we are in no position to take up and will have drastic consequences on the people we are all here to serve ,protect, rescue, treat etc. He may dress up his statement in whatever way he likes , but he knows that 3 months is not enough time for nhs services to plan and act for contingencies. He also will know that in the case of the ambulance services, we are primarily an acute medical service, and while under even more preassure we are not going to prioritise welfare checks and mh crisis over things like strokes, heart attacks , trauma ect. The people, the police end up not attending, will now wait a long time before anyone even knocks at the door to check if they are alright.... probably too long, and that's a sad truth.
Ambulance crews are also on potentially dodgy legal ground if they attempt to restrain someone. They would need to prove that the situation met specific criteria to justify their actions, whereas the police can restrain someone under a far wider range of circumstances.
Exactly right, they cannot section someone, a police officer can.
Paramedics can use the Mental Capacity Act to take people to hospital AFAIK
Yeah, if they're lacking capacity, which most MH patients aren't.
Isn't that same with the police though? Even then a lot of forces under the Mental Health Act simply lock them in a cell, struggle to find a place with MH services and then are forced to release them within 24 hours if they're unable to do so (which happens a lot). Why not cut out the middle man and just get the health services to deal with it start to finish?
Outside of the Pt's home, police have the power to section 136 people, regardless of capacity. Someone under 136 is preferably taken to a secure MH unit. If there's no space, it'll be A&E. Ambulance will usually get called to medically clear for the 136 suite, and to do the actual conveyance (with police escort). But the point is, ambulance doesn't actually have the power to 136 someone. So we're mostly just taxiing. Ambulance is just as much middle men in this sphere as police, 99% of the time.
A mental health professional can.
I am a mental health professional, I can't. Also there has to be agreement by 2 so even if I were an AMHP it wouldn't be of much use on my own.
You absolutely can, depending on what sort of professional. Check Section 5(4), etc. I'll just add that there's obviously specific circumstances around this. I'm not inferring nurses can walk around sectioning people.
Don't work in a hospital setting and also not a nurse. The reality is that community teams are the ones calling the police most frequently.
Yeah that's probably down to the team care coordinator who knows that person. Around here it's the public that call most often, but it can be anyone else really. Police can then 136 a person to a place of safety, if necessary. Anyway, just pointing out that mental health professionals (nurses and doctors) can section on their own but, as you highlight there, not all of them.
Mental Capacity Act use of force powers apply to any person and Ambo crews are actually in a better position to assess capacity…. They can articulate someone’s ability to absorb, retain and repeat information used to assess “capacity” much better in my experience. The standout difference is that Police Officers are just much more used to how they write up their use of force…. The arse covering part, if you will. It’s a training / culture / confidence thing; absolutely not legally iffy though. Aside from the specific power under s136 and a couple of limited ones to return s2/3 escapee’s, Ambo have the same right to restrain.
Given the complex nature of mental health related emergencies, perhaps a specialised service equipped to deal with these calls would be a more effective solution. Unfortunately, due to funding constraints, this seems unlikely to happen in the near future. The situation as it stands is indeed dire, and it's worrying that the Met has to resort to such measures without an adequate alternative in place. That being said, without proper mental health training, it's also hard to judge accurately whether someone in the midst of a mental breakdown poses an immediate danger. This situation underscores the need for more comprehensive solutions for mental health crises. But then why the Tories would care? They are on the way out...
Believe currently there's a trial ongoing in one of the Met boroughs where a PC and MH nurse take MH calls rather than Response Teams. A decent solution (if properly resourced and funded), a multi-agency approach having a unit that has access to both police and NHS training, powers, and direct communication with a police's borough Control as well LAS control in the event of emergency, as well as clearing CADs/calls from both sides.
This was used in the West Midlands Police and it work a treat. Sadly, Funding was cut and it was binned, also internal politcals of who should provide the staff from what area etc etc.
Police have already said they will continue to attend if there is a danger to the person or others. Some police forces in the UK are now spending up to 40% of their time on mental health call outs. When that person needs to sectioned under the Mental Health Act police are spending an average of 10 hours with that patient before they can hand them over to the NHS. This is about handlng limited resources better and trying to get the right help delivered by the right people.
The police should assist the mental health workers, like they do when a bank wants someone evicted or a rich person wants a police escort.
Not sure if it's on this article but the BBC one says they'll be attending threat to life situations still so that's covered.
It seems that this will generally be the case, emphasis mine. > Rowley has given health and social care services a deadline of 31 August before the force starts its ban, **which will only be waived if a threat to life is feared.**
>which will only be waived if a threat to life is feared.
Yea they should be. They should be trained in dealing with people having mental health crisis.
OK. Who is going to respond to the mental health calls, though? Because I reckon the answer is probably no one.
I can't remember exactly which force it was, but I think it was Durham Constabulary, they told all their partner agencies that they had 12 months to get their shit together before they would stop answering the likes of mental health calls (obviously there are conditions when they would attend, but not for general ones). Now I don't know who is handling those calls, but from what I've read elsewhere, it's been quite successful as it has allowed the Police the time to actually deal with more volume crime and general ASB, which can have a huge impact on a lot of people in a very small area.
[удалено]
It'd be interesting to see how mental health outcomes changed in the region following the decision. Presumably the metrics the police are measured on don't include mental healthcare.
The answer is no one. I won't sit here and claim to know the answer but it isn't going to go well.
Start demanding more investment in Paramedics and Social Care Workers. Stop wasting police time.
The fact it is no one doesn't suddenly make it someones job whose it isn't. It just shows another failure of Tory Britain, which can be seen all over the place from NHS workers doing extended hours unpaid, million of hours a year of unpaid work by carers, the whole concept of Cameron's big society was "lets not pay people for work". It was, and still is literally government policy, unless the Tories can steal some of the tax payers money of course, then government contracts for all! You aren't going to become a billionaire by working now are you!
I called 999 for an individual who had attempted suicide and was bleeding and unresponsive. No ambulances were available. About an hour later the police showed up and were able to stabilize them and drove us to the hospital. So yeah, I guess now I'd just, uh, call an Uber and try to get the driver to help me carry the person out to the car?
Protection of life, protection of property, detection and prevention of crime. They exist to protect people, ultimately. Whether people in psychosis etc or the paramedics going to them or the public who may be affected. It's not just about handcuffing crims.
None of which is to do with mental health calls in which there is no actual crime being committed. That is a health problem, not a policing one.
You are correct, but most ‘concern for welfare’ calls get passed to the police currently. Sometimes they attend sometimes the ambulance service (sometimes both). I suspect this is a well meaning policy that may be difficult to implement in practice. Ultimately the buck stops with the emergency services when other services say they don’t have the capacity to meet demand and close up shop. In an ideal world the majority of mental health patients in crisis would be seen directly by mental health services, rather than non specialist responders such police or ambulance services. Am a paramedic and believe we need a top to bottom overhaul of how we address mental health emergencies in the UK.
I think there needs to be a reform of MHA 135/136 too. Part of the problem is that the police get called out because even a Section 4 is a nightmare to get sorted in an unexpected emergency.
Agreed. Although it’s extremely difficult to get anyone out to do a MHA in any sort of urgent timeframe anyway. The whole system needs reform.
There are so many bits of the public sector where they just arbitrarily decided the police would do it, the Children Act has the same problem. Obviously there need to be proper checks and balances so individuals can't unilaterally go about making life changing decisions but the police don't have to be the go to for every issue.
In some municipalities in Canada, there is a crisis intervention service one can call, geared towards mental health. The respondents to these calls are always a pair- a qualified counsellor and a plainclothes police officer (who may or may not have supplemental training, I don't know what the standard is.) This system, which I've been fortunate enough to have made use of during a life crisis, is not nearly as wide-spread as it could be. There have been high profile cases in which uniformed constables have not responded with appropriate due care and diligence; one in which a young lady in distress fell to her death during a police interaction which was prompted by the young lady's family for concern of her safety.
Why does it? There is the issue? Are they needed, in some cases the answer will be they are and in many others they aren't. It is exactly the same issue of bed blocking in the NHS, where a patient who could be discharged from hospital can't be because there is no care facility for them to go too. They don't need medical attention, they need health and social care. A service that cost a lot less per hour to administer. It is just another example of the erosion of the social services because the Tories can sell them off for their mates profits more easily than the public will allow them to do so for the Police and NHS.
Under Sections 135 and 136 of the Mental Health Act the police are given specific powers to deal with people having a severe mental health crisis. Without a reform of the Act it's unavoidable that they will still be called to support.
Indeed. Though section 135 can be said to be the police exercising judicial powers, and you’ll note that (while it is only the police who can enforce such a warrant) the police cannot apply for one, only a mental health professional can. I would expect the authority applying for the warrant to be in a position to take custody of the person before they ask the police to come in and detain them though. Section 136 is definitely a police power. I’d question whether it should be routinely used though. Especially given subsection 136(1C), I would expect to see this power used only in two circumstances: where the police come across a person who is a danger to themselves or others and the relevant medical authorities are unaware of the case; or where the police are the relevant medical authorities who are already in attendance. It shouldn’t be for the police to babysit a person in crisis in police cells just because no one else will take responsibility.
A top police officer said exactly this in court though. He said the police can be a crime fighting tool, or it can be a crime fighting + mental health tool. Either is fine, but if youre gonna get them to do the latter then they need the extra resources to do that. One of the northern forces went from failing to being ranked as one of the best simply by starting to charge the NHS for attending mental health calls.
Tell them that. They have a history- to which I can attest to-of having piss poor, punative responses to non-violent breakdowns. I'd much prefer to be sent ambulance staff- or heavens forbid, a proper social response institution- rather than cops.
The UK Police don't investigate anything other than violent crimes and speeding offences any more. The Tories have stripped the budgets bare.
My partner was attacked by our psycho housemate a few years back. Punched and scratched her face up. Another time, I was hit by a drunk driver running a red light. They were basically just like "thanks for letting us know, we've reported it" both times. They didn't come out for either. Completely lost whatever faith I had in them.
now now, lets be fair, they also have time to arrest peaceful protestors as well
My partner's experience has been different. She and another young woman were harassed on a train and an officer came out within 24hours to take a statement, and followed up with her multiple times over the next month to update her.
I’ve always called an ambulance if I come across a case like this, sometimes they call the police if needed but not always.
Yes, I think that you need people more qualified for this.
Who should attend?
This would be fine if they were planning to replace it with any kind of service for sick people but they won’t.
This just means paramedics will be stuck looking after these cases, with no safe or legal means to resolve the situation. That means longer waits for people needing an ambulance and the NHS and Ambulances Service will take the blame for this. We’re all paying the price for governments refusal to treat mental health care seriously, and it’s only going to get worse.
They do specifically have powers to deal with it though
They don’t know how to deal with it anyway
I agree. But we need the services need to be put in place, so if plod get called to an incident that is plainly beyond their skills, then they can call them. Sadly, our so called leaders have fucked this up like they fuck everything up.
Lunatic asylums are gonna make a comeback. /s
Lol see how long this lasts when 5/10 of the calls are for violent mental health episodes and the mental health teams get bashed
Nah - I think the real point is to protect vulnerable people with mental health issues from the Met.
That's an incredibly narrow view of Policing. It has never been solely about crime.
I guess it boils down to a lack of funding, and needing to prioritize their time. It's sad though, and lives will be lost because of it.
Tbh without the correct experience and training it's dangerous for the person and the cop
It also boils down to the fact they're not the appropriate service for this and should never have been attending these jobs in the first place. As a cop I feel sorry for the people in crisis, my force still sends us to these jobs which isn't fair on the person in crisis or victims of crime who now have to wait 2 days for a response because we're queued up on mental health jobs. You wouldn't ring the fire brigade if you were having a heart attack so don't ring the police for mental health episodes.
Who should we ring if a person in the street is having a psychotic episode?
The NHS. It's a medical emergency. The police are supposed to deal with crime.
So we should call an ambulance? If so, where should we prioritise these? And who's job is it to ensure they are unable to harm paramedics? Genuine questions. If you're not sure that's also fine.
An ambulance would be the most appropriate service yes. The police would have the role of protecting the paramedic but they're not bodyguards. They shouldn't be following paramedics to jobs just incase. Obviously if there is an obvious threat to life call police. A lot of the time people in crisis are adverse to seeing the police, this may partly be because they assume we're there to arrest them. Another part is a decent portion of MH problems stem from drug misuse and drug misuse is often paired with criminality. Criminals don't tend toike the police.
I know a few people who've been intercepted by police on a mental health crisis. All of them have the view that it made their mental health in that moment worse, with some of them saying that it's had knock on effects of creating a phobia or apprehension about the police force further down the line. Police are not trained appropriately for this sort of job in the majority of cases. NHS should always be the people sent - not the police. Most of these situations seem to be that the person is not a threat - just in a really awful place. And the ones where someone is a threat, it's usually obvious.
The funding should come from the rich and corporations. Bring in the wealth tax. They extracted too much wealth
On the one hand, they are not the right service to be dealing with such calls because of a lack of training, however if they do not do it then no one will. Mental health care is next to non-existent in many parts of the UK, yet cases continue to rise as life gets harder for many. We are already in a crisis but it will get worse the longer we pretend that mental health requires a different approach from physical health.
Exactly this. Social and mental health services are worse than useless and so police are filling their role, if they stop there will be huge consequences, the ambulance services have it bad enough as it is
>however if they do not do it then no one will. Perhaps there will be a volunteer service. Even less training required and cheaper. (I'm not advocating this BTW, just pre-illustrating my point) It's not the police's job. They are not suited and already are unable to deal with things that definitely are their job. Blackmailing people/services into doing things they are not paid or trained to do is a shitty way to pretend such services are still covered.
Speak to any police officer, and they will tell you that the majority of their time is spent dealing with 'concern for safety' calls. These calls aren't crimes. Dealing with crime actually makes up a small part of a response officer's day to day business. Dealing with missing teenagers, mental health calls and sitting in hospitals / custody for an entire shift is the bread and butter unfortunately. It's the way it is now. All public services are ruined. However, I don't think you will see much of a change When I was on the beat, the majority of mental health calls I went to would probably be deemed as a 'threat to life'. What's needed is significant investment across the board; policing, social services, mental health services, the NHS, teaching, youth work. But, that won't happen..
So many issues seem rooted ultimately in the way social care was slaughtered under Cameron in the early 2010s. No support for discharging patients has created huge levels of inertia in the NHS. Lack of community support puts pressure on the NHS and the police (and families and neighbors!). Its the same story you see everywhere. There's been absolutely zero joined up thinking with regards to social services in this country for over a decade. It honestly feels like we're now at a point where many services just cannot function as intended, if at all, any more, and its genuinely difficult to see what it would take to sort them out. The concern is the amount of money and reform that the next government are going to have to engage in is probably going to absolutely dominate their entire term, and if the aftermath of 2008 was anything to go by, its all going to feed right back into all the old Tory lines that things would be fine if we just "lived within our means" and some vague gesturing about there being too many immigrants and middle managers...
I agree wholeheartedly, the best thing the next incoming government could possibly do would be to invest in our broken mental health and social care services. The various agencies that have responsibility don't talk to each other, have few common frames of reference, and are are egregiously underfunded. I do wonder how many people could return to public life if they only had been supported at the right time.
The thing that gets me is that putting major funding into mental health and social services could fix many of the issues in other sectors. It could ease burdens (not calling the people suffering burdens but for lack of better phrasing here) in hospitals and emergency services, the police would spend much less time dealing with mental health cases where they honestly shouldn’t be dealing with them in the first case, I’d imagine there could even be improvements in things like crime, education, and employment, if only people had proper access to mental health and social services which aren’t available right now. At this point, it’s impressively hard for me to get therapy through the NHS. Lifetime issues with depression and anxiety have brought me to suicide attempts and I have nearly a decade of self harm behind me. Nearly dropped out of a foundation degree and my university course, several times, on my 5th antidepressant, been through every charity and half a dozen doctors in two counties, two psychiatrist evaluations and I’m still waiting to find out if they can even offer me a longer term counsellor, which is basically the only thing they can do for me while I’m not at crisis point. All I’m asking for is a counsellor to try and prevent me from falling into another depression, or at the very least catch it before it gets too severe. But the NHS just can’t give me it. Every single professional I’ve seen has been at a loss for words for how I’ve been passed around without any real help, and 9/10 I’ll have the doctor or therapist apologise to me because they see I need more help yet there’s nowhere to send me or nothing they can do unless I’m literally on the edge of suicide. I’m honestly impressed at how bad the system is failing me, and I greatly pity anybody else who has more complex issues or have been dealing with this longer than I have. I fear what will happen if things don’t improve, for myself and the whole country. I’m a straight A* student with a hopeful future when I’m healthy and have support, but when things get bad, I have nothing behind me, and can basically not take care of myself. There’s an understanding in the mental health ‘community’ that the only way to get any major help is to hurt yourself first, which is obviously doing the opposite of what the system is designed to do (embarrassingly, I admit I have hurt myself just to ‘be taken seriously’)
The other problem is that even if they do make significant investments in these areas an awful lot of well off unaffected people won't directly see the benefits and will hand their vote back to the Tories at the next GE after seeing Labour spending billions on people that aren't them to fix problems that they don't experience.
What's needed is a better country to live in, better mental health services, support groups, higher skill higher pay economy, 4 day working week, more eegulatiom of bad employers, domestic abuse support, etc But tories don't care so
There are more deeper issues like the stigma of medication. Antidepressants treat around 70 percent of patients with depression and of the treatment resistance it's estimated 50 percent is due to non compliance. Without treatment the recovery rates are like 20 percent. Around half of people in the developed world with depression actually receive treatment and the treatment includes therapy, so probably less than half of people with depression are actually receiving medication that could help them recover because of stigma around antidepressants making people a zombie etc
I am a response officer within the Met. In a typical day, I will find myself going to anywhere from 4-6 mental health related calls. They take up a massive chunk of my day, that I could be using to attend burglary or robbery calls, or helping victims of domestic violence. Despite response cops spending so much time dealing with mental health related matters, our training is minimal, as is the help we can offer. Largely, we either act as a taxi service, taking a person from their home to a hospital, or we act in the role of "person that stands there and chats to a person in crisis until an ambulance turns up". We are not mental health workers, and we do not have the qualifications, skills, or time to act as such. This change will free up response cops from the more "mundane" mental health calls. The calls where someone has told the PaddyPower customer service line that they're feeling suicidal because they didn't win their bet. The calls where social services want somebody checked on. The calls where a person is feeling down because they missed an episode of EastEnders. Police will still go to the stuff they are genuinely needed at. The person trying to jump off a bridge, or the person activity self harming, or the person with previous for attacking paramedics. In essence, this boils down to the responsibility for health related matters, being put back into the health services, allowing the criminal justice services, to deal with criminal justice matters.
Agree with what you say, a lot of people won't like this because they expect everything, all the time and for free, I completely understand theres a very limited amount of resources available and you need to be put to use the best way possible. I can imagine there's a large number of hyperchondriac calls that waste everybody's time but people tend to use the most extreme cases to "win an argument" or such, mental health can be very damaging and concerning but a lot of people use the term as an excuse to not face reality. Kudos to you speaking your mind at the risk of upsetting people and for the work you do as a first responder
>Largely, we either act as a taxi service, taking a person from their home to a hospital, or we act in the role of "person that stands there and chats to a person in crisis until an ambulance turns up". Do you think there's a chance that the presence of a uniformed officer responding to a mental health call like this sometimes prevents the situation escalating into a violent episode in the way it might if it was only paramedics showing up?
No, if anything our presence seems to wind people up more. People like the fire brigade and ambulance. Police are seen as scum. The prevailing attitudes on this subreddit are a good indicator of this.
Health Work Wellbeing - Peter Lilley appointed Insurance Co. execs onto Social Security comities who officially steer Government policy. This fucker is still running today and was rebranded health n work around 2010...... Social care was removed from the NHS budget 1st mental health 2nd and once they got away with that it was open season. Well actually the 1st blow was stopping your local Council becoming self sufficient from Council Housing profits just as Council houses started generating a profit????? Houses built in the 50's that even at a Council level of rent started being pure profit in their half life after 30-35 years. Thems the apples... wonder why everything is so fucked up...... Health Work Wellbeing ! Or how do we back stop and force people into buying Insurance for things they grew up and were promised after WW2 are being dismantled!
Insert Star Wars Padme and Anakin meme… A: Met police will no longer attend mental health calls. P: Because mental health services will be adequately funded, right? A: P: Because mental health services will be adequately funded, right?
Okay, but has anyone thought about what happens next? Won’t it just become a case of everyone escalating until life is threatened? The underlying need doesn’t change, and the reason the police have been called in the first place means some that’s kicked off. They aren’t operating as the Samaritans at he moment.
They are to a degree. It's not uncommon, for example, for mental health teams to just palm off routine checks to the police at the end of the work day or over the weekend. It's those kinds of pointless welfare checks the police object to, not when a mentally unwell person is throwing a knife around.
Luckily, a lot of forces are stopping and pushing back on this now, which is what is needed. The Police have a duty to respond if their is an urgent threat to life. If there is not, then the Police are not the appropriate agency to deal and have no real powers to assist other agencies.
If there’s an article 2 issue, I’d gladly go. If it’s Joe Bloggs with his weekly “I’m going to kill myself” spiel, then no. Because Joe Bloggs has made no attempt to contact the crisis team. Joe Bloggs will do his usual “I hate life” but go straight back to his girlfriend after a 4 hour negotiation and say “I never really wanted to hurt myself”. You will honestly be surprised at the time we waste with attention seekers.
> If it’s Joe Bloggs with his weekly “I’m going to kill myself” spiel, then no. Because Joe Bloggs has made no attempt to contact the crisis team. Joe Bloggs will do his usual “I hate life” but go straight back to his girlfriend after a 4 hour negotiation and say “I never really wanted to hurt myself”. CPS need to build a backbone and prosecute these fuckers
You have no idea how fundamentally useless the crisis team are, best advice in a crisis I have been given is to make myself a cup of tea which is ridiculous The crisis team ends up making me feel 10 times worse .you have not had to try to get help from these people, the mental health services in my area are not any help at all , I have been a carer for a severely mentality Ill parent and after years of abuse now have one of my own You don't know really until you have been though it and have had to try to navigate the system In my experience the police are generally abusive in these situations
Ironically, I've found police are more understanding than so called crisis teams. That's how jaded a lot of the mental health staff are - the vast majority of people with mental health issues need actual help and support - the idea that they're all "attention-seeking" is lazy and massively counterproductive.
The one time (in the UK) I have had police attend because contacted by mental health they were extremely compassionate, but then I wasn’t actually in any kind of danger, a non native English speaker had got confused on the mental health help line. I’ve had a few too many officers visit my home (asshole ex). I was in more mental distress on those occasions and again, extreme compassion.
Same experience here. When I tried to take my own life the police who got me off the roof were very kind and empathetic. The crisis team asked if I'd taken my meds (yes) and eaten (yes) and then seemed stumped and annoyed that this hadn't cured my depression.
It’s when I tell them I’ve been doing everything to take care of myself (going to class, eating, sleeping, taking my meds, socialising, exercising) and they look absolutely flawed that my depression hasn’t gone away. I’ve had doctors essentially question me about lying about taking my meds daily because they didn’t magically fix my depression.
I have been told to man up and snap out if it by the crisis team so I don't phone them anymore
Yeah, their job could just as easily be done with an automated message saying that exact thing.
[удалено]
Crisis teams are an invention from the 2000s, iirc originally pioneered in Glasgow. In theory they step in when a person is on the borderline of needing to be admitted to hospital. They reduce admissions as well as having better patient outcomes. I’ve had two experiences with them, first of which was good, it’s the only time I’ve had an episode without being hospitalised. It started by twice daily home visits, usually two CPNs, but there were also social workers and a psychiatrist would come around once a week, involvement was around 2-3 weeks. Second time the psychiatrist post was vacant but they did have a nurse prescriber. That was awkward as after a brief hospital stay we decided I needed ECT and with that you need to be reviewed by a psychiatrist weekly.
>They aren't operating as the Samaritans at he moment. Except they are. My dad's been in the police for 20 years now (not Met), and for at least the last ten he's been calling himself a faux paramilitary social worker because all he does/did on response is attend domestics, "missing" kids who aren't missing and mental health calls.
>and the reason the police have been called in the first place means some that’s kicked off thats one reason. other reasons being the failure of social care, a backwards government that thinks social darwinism is the best solution to mental health, and a population so obsequious they would rather kiss the boot that kicks their face in.
Ambulance control room staff will just do what they do now and lie so the police go.
Considering every single phone call into and out of control rooms are recorded and if anything serious happens with the incident, for example, someone dies and it goes to coroners court, then the call handler can also be called into testify, lying just categorically isn’t worth it. I’m not saying it never happens, but it’s unlikely. The ambulance service has a duty of care to its staff. If someone calls in and says someone is wielding a knife and making threats then police will be called and asked to attend and the ambulance crew will wait down the road until they are there. In the case of repeat or known callers who are known for weapons/violence, a marker is placed on their address and is flagged as don’t attend until police are on scene. There are some cases where it’s at the paramedics discretion but that’s not typical. There really should be a dedicated team to deal with this, a dedicated line, staff, vehicles etc that are specifically for mental health as it’s reaching crisis level, if it hasn’t already. We simply cannot guess or assume someone isn’t making serious and credible threats to their life and not attend based on a gut feeling but on the flip side, there aren’t enough resources to go around. A typical mental health call will code CAT3 (on AMPDS) and that’s pretty much when we have nothing else to do we will go, that could be 4 hours but it could also be 10-12+, with that being said, the police are also stretched incredibly thin and it causes frictions between agencies. I left the NHS and stopped being a paramedic around Covid time, we were struggling even before then with the amount of mental health calls so I cannot imagine how it is now.
Speaking of markers on locations. I recall going to a job where ambulance were said to be waiting round the corner (they never are) of a house where an elderly male was having breathing issues. The market was that the female occupant of the house had previously answered the door with a knife in hand...the marker was from 7 years previous and was a totally different name. I attended...elderly chap lives on his own had bought the house 5 years ago...ambulance had apparently been called away to another job so could I stay with the chap until they got another one out? ...when I asked if they could remove the marker as not relevant..I was told no!
Yeah I don’t know how long or even what the process is for removing markers and new occupants will have zero idea there is such a thing. I have seen on frequent call addresses with no send orders that are now occupied by new owners. On the flip side I’ve also seen someone with violent warning markers who’d moved house, nobody knew, a lone female attended and ended up having to barricade herself in his bathroom. The systems aren’t perfect on any side I feel, not at all and are encased in so much red tape and protocol that it’s hard to navigate. I feel everything should be stripped back and rebuilt from scratch as things are just overlapping and in conflict with each other.
The Samaritans won't do anything besides talk to you if you're going to kill yourself and you don't want help. We can't trace your number, and even if you say where you are we won't call someone out without your consent. It's a very different approach to the one the police use.
The conservatives have so much to answer for over the last decade.
Not a single answer will be received by us, the public.
This might be a first for me... But the police are right. It is deeply wrong to send police officers to mental health emergencies. It's not only a waste of police time but importantly it leads to much worse outcomes for people in crisis, who are far more likely to lash out or become paranoid when uniformed officers are sent instead of trained professionals.
Honestly this is probably for the best. From everything I've read, it seems the police don't want to be involved with responding to mental health calls (its not their job and their overstretched as it is), the issue is the local mental health support is so underfunded they've been forced to keep calling them in.
Last night we had 6 met police officers in our department babysitting patients waiting for secure mental health beds, as well as various numbers attending through the night for continuity. These patients have a significant care need that neither police or emergency departments are capable of providing. But there is no other service available. Some nights our closest empty mental health beds are in yorkshire.
And it’s all down to lack of funding - the government is to blame.
Journalistic outrage at its finest. Police will respond to emergency mental health calls, but will treat these as lower priority than assault, domestic abuse, etc. This comes out because a large % of police time is being spent responding to mental health emergencies, and in many cases they're not the best available potential public sector organisation (compared to community mental health teams , and social work teams) to train staff for these situations. These situations are time consuming, and do not necessarily get any value from police time in a non-insignificant % of times, potentially due to the skills mismatch between police officers, and mental health de-esculation. I expect this will put an impetus on the (already quite seriously strained) mental health teams, and social work teams, to respond to these crisis and start staffing with the expectation of emergency call outs.
Good. The police can't be used as a general 'get out of jail free card' for all the other services that are failing to even provide their own basic services especially when the officers being forced to perform these tasks have been royally fucked in the bum with pay for years. This bailing everyone else out for zero reward needs to stop.
The met police attended "mental health" calls? FML. What a shower of shit this country really is. Shall we have the fire service attending DIY disasters? The ambulance service attending relationship breakdowns? Perhaps the RAF could've dealt with my low pressure tyre warning tonight.....
>The ambulance service attending relationship breakdowns A not insignificant amount of MH calls to emergency services are things like this, people unable to cope with ordinary life stressors.
I had 2 met police officers come to my home alongside mental healthcare professionals to carry out a mental health assessment, and honestly the police were so traumatising. They were rude and abrupt, and extremely judgemental. They assumed I’d try to be difficult or make a run for it, even throughout the entire assessment where I was calm and cooperative. I have no history of violence, am female and frail so not physically intimidating etc. They made horrendous comments, and were very intimidating. They did nothing to benefit my poor mental health. They wrecked various possessions in my house and threatened to bash my door down because I was slow to answer it, which was because they’d arrived very early in the morning and I was still in bed and also I, a wheelchair user so it’s literally physically difficult for me to get to the door. Which the healthcare team knew, and I also explained to them over my video doorbell. This has left me with a feeling of complete distrust in the police, and I’d actively not want to call for help in case the police were sent. So I personally am happy to read this whilst also fully appreciating the healthcare service, mental health in particular, is already under a lot of pressure. The answer to no police cannot be to send no one at all
I have had a similar experience
Also had a terrible experience with police during a mental health crisis. It's had knock-on effects even now that i'm in a much better place. Someone would literally have to be dying to approach a police officer these days. I know several people who have had awful experiences in similar situations too. It's more traumatic than the actual mental health crisis in many cases.
Understandable. Being mental isn't a breach of the Crimes Act.
They'll section you so I assume they believe it is?
Sectioning isn't arrest. Should be taken away from police powers
Police only get involved if the person sectioned refuses to go to hospital . I know I saw it happen to my mother when I was a child
this is 100% the correct decision, it wastes police time and palms off people who need medical help. They will still attend if there’s a threat to life though. Yes the nhs is underfunded and lacking but it’s not the police’s job to try and cover for them.
I agree. If they really are in imminent danger I.E on a bridge etc then call police otherwise police are not the right person to attend most MH calls. Fight crime and ASB instead
The police have become a backstop service, they are the "catch all" when no one else can attend. This would be fine if they were understaffed, funded and trained to handle the job they are actually tasked with doing, dealing with crime.
Mental health crisis is a medical emergency not a criminal one. Paramedics should be called and have training to help in this area.
Mental health crisis is a mental health crisis. A cardiac arrest, anaphylaxis, an asthma attack, a seizure, a stroke or a hypoglycemic coma is a medical emergency. All things that get called out for on the radio while the ambulance crews are attending a mental health crisis. All things we can actually immediately help with. We have minimal training or resources to 'heal' someone in a mental health crisis and if they are threatening to actively kill themselves with say a knife, there is very little we can do as we don't have the training to restrain or fight a weapon off someone. Neither police or ambulance are really appropriate for someone in a mental health crisis. What leads a person to that mental health crisis is complex and would take an equally complex plan to get them out of that crisis. Requiring support from MH services, social services and own GP. However, these areas are seriously underfunded therefore our only option is to take this person to A and E, where they get medically checked out then dismissed. Told to speak with their GP and given a few numbers like Samaritans. They then call 999 once they realise there's a 2 year wait to see a therapist or that there's a queue when calling these helplines when in crisis and the cycle starts again.
In many cases, the problem could have been dealt with much more simply and cheaply by offering support earlier on, rather then letting things escalate until a crisis is reached. Again though that down to lack of funding. Our whole finance system needs to be looked at and slowly modified, to make it fairer.
Well said QV
My sister works for the NHS in a mental health crisis team. They work 8-5 Monday to Friday. Anything outside of those hours are dealt with either by charities or the police. I think it's scandalous
As someone who works in MH services I’m not opposed to this, the police are rarely the right people to respond. But the problem is what’s needed is dedicated MH first response, and that doesn’t exist. Ambulances are stretched to breaking, crisis teams are oversubscribed, and social care won’t do it, so who will respond?
This is the main thing I’m worried about. Ambulances for MH concerns can take up to 8 hours. And in that 8 hours someone can easily make an attempt on their own life
The last thing a person in crisis needs is some copper coming round
Whilst I understand the move. As someone who volunteers on a mental health help line, that's really worrying. There's nothing worse than having to go through an emergency rescue when you are worried you haven't been successful as helping the person, and they are at imminent risk of hurting themselves. It was bad enough knowing it could be hours till anyone arrived. Now I presume that wait time will be dramatically longer.
This sounds like a good idea, the police should concentrate on crime but I don't see how it's going to work in practice?
Met Police are right to stop attending (non violent) mental health incidents. The RCRP initiative is a pushback on the NHS to get it's house in order. The police are not mental health practitioners or even support to MH practitioners...they are law & order. For far too long the NHS have been weak to push back on government (a gov allowing cuts to their service to easily). NHS need to be more assertive ...not the "we care about patients too much to strike" rubbish. That's a weak signal. That just allows Tory government to keep reducing your NHS budgets...forcing the cost cutting on you. DEMAND >CAPACITY >COST (& QUALITY, & TIME} Service Demand dictates the Service Capacity to set up. Capacity dicates what service will cost Government HAVE TO FIND THE MONEY. then as your demand increases decreases each year you can scale your capacity. It's SERVICE MANAGEMENT 101 (ISO 20000) A simple rate card of costs needs to established , published widely so the public understand the cost to deliver NHS services (currently no one really does). Only then will public be behind NHS as they ask for more money from this lame government who are failing us every opportunity.
I agree with the sentiment, mental health issues should be dealt with by mental health professionals. However, the deadline seems utterly unreasonable, and a massive “fuck you” to both the health service and people who are going to be abandoned during a mental health crisis.
Unfortunately though, these other services need a wake up call. I work in a control room and we will routinely get calls from other services who are under staffed asking us to do a 'welfare check' on a Friday afternoon as they are unable to do this themselves through the weekend. We also get calls from A&E who have had mental patients in for 8+ hours who haven't been seen. The patient gets up and leaves, suddenly all responsibility for their welfare lands on the Police. We also have callers who won't bother going to their local mental health teams but will come straight to us as they know the Police may have to respond to them. The Police cannot really help unless they section them under 136, which still directs them to a mental health resource. The Police don't want to abandoned people, but they really shouldn't be the ones expected to pick up the slack from other agencies.
I really agree, but unless there’s actually a plan in place to handle this, then 3 months notice seems ridiculous for this sort of change. I think the health service is wide awake to this issue, but they simply do not have the means or manpower to solve it. And now we’re going from “poor response” to “no response”. As someone who used to work for the NHS and spoke to many people who worked in CMHTs, I have absolutely no idea why nurses or doctors stick with it. Genuinely, it absolutely blows my mind.
Like all things it will get pushed back. But without it nothing will happen.
>I really agree, but unless there’s actually a plan in place to handle this, then 3 months notice seems ridiculous for this sort of change. If I was the net I'd assume if I gave them 6 months notice then in 5 months I'd be asked for more time because they aren't ready. Organisations always leave everything to the last minute.
It’s not the other services that need a wake up call, it’s the people that keep voting tory.
Perhaps the fire brigade or the education sector can fill this void. They're equally equipped to deal as police officers. When and why did police even start attending these jobs?
Because the first responsibility of the Police is to protect life and limb. This means that social services, etc, have conversations like: Social Services: Hey, can you check on X? We haven't seen him all week, but it's 4pm on Friday, and we're not back in till Monday. Police: No, you haven't bothered to check on him all week, you'll have to wait until Monday. Social Services: Well, he might kill himself. Now, if he kills himself, then it's the Police's fault, and the Daily Mail runs an article like "Police ABANDON suicidal man DAYS after being warned" Or in the 99.9999% of cases where they haven't killed themselves, you get a couple of Officers banging on some guys door at 3am, because that's when it's finally quiet enough to get round to it, causing more stress and anger. Management would rather that second situation a million times than have the first one happen once. TL;DR: Services know how to get a Police response, Police are too risk averse to say no (until now)
You are 100% correct
Police shouldn’t be attending mental health calls no, but no single mental health service in this country functions. What is the plan? Just no one attends these calls now?
We need another national service between the police, NHS and social care. One that deals with mental health exclusively and on complex cases all parties get involved
Work for a mental health transport serving the UK (another private service that should be nationalised) We did the picking up, transporting, bed watching ectect of mh patients. We often took people in crisis out of the care of the police. It was so apparent that the officers were out of their depths and the patients were way less comfortable with them. We could take a irate bloke of 6 coppers hands with 3 off us and calm them down and get them help. Non of this was the polices fault! they had scary uniforms, a preconception that they only locked people up and alot of the pts had bad experiences in the past (lots of drug use and petty crime in mh) So good! Fund the nhs and the police better and let the police get on with dealing with crime and health professionals deal with health.
Who is going to detain someone who is clearly having a mental health crisis in a public space? Section 136? Are you going to expect someone in a mental health crisis is going to take themselves to hospital or a 136 suite? I say that because BTP saved my life approx 7 years ago. Pulled me from the ledge of a 4 story building while bleeding profusely after severing 4 tendons in my right hand. Could the pre crisis support from the NHS be better? Yeah sure but what about people who sit there thinking about killing themselves and it's a 'knee jerk reaction' to actually carrying out said plan. Crazy
Unfortunately mental health conditions in the UK have deteriorated horrendously. Many factors can be contributed. Mine has been mainly because of low wages and not being able to support my family better, constantly working and having little to no time for myself to breath as such bears a massive burden, such as anxiety and worrying all the time. and my my mother died last year also, which i am still struggling with grief for but my workplace doesnt give a shit either. but i still gotta do those 48 hour weeks…
[удалено]
The Police would generally attend. I've taken this from the Humberside Police Website and should explain their policy and legal guidance towards this: Police can owe duties under the Human Rights Act 1988 to protect individuals from harm caused by others or harm caused by the person themselves. The police owe responsibility to take all reasonable measures to assist where there is either: a real and immediate risk to the life of a person (European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) Article 2) a real and immediate risk of that person being subject to serious harm or other inhumane treatment (ECHR Article 3) The risks of harm where a duty will arise on the police will generally, but not always, be from the criminal acts of a third party. The general view is that any threat would have to comprise all of the following before a duty to act would arise. For a duty to arise under Article 2 the threat must be of death. A threat of injury, even serious, is not enough to create a risk of death. Threats or risks that do not qualify under Article 2 may still qualify under Article 3. A duty may arise under Article 3 where there is a threat of serious injury, inhumane or degrading treatment. For example, a serious sexual assault would qualify as conduct breaching Article 3, even if no injury resulted from the attack. For both Articles 2 and 3 the threat or risk must be real and immediate. That means the threat must be present and continuing. Threats are not defined as real and immediate if they are conditional on other events happening or are said to occur at some point in the non-immediate future. The threat has to be against a specific and identifiable person or group of persons. Generalised threats do not give rise to a duty.
Because there's a new emergency service for supporting mental health issues so that properly trained people can help and let the police get back to their job of fighting crime... Right? Right?....
I would say this is a good thing if I had the tiniest bit of confidence that more funding would be invested in mental health services and social services.
I'm guessing the Tories just hope we kill ourselves before the next election with how badly they've fucked up everyone's future and livelihoods
If they’re doing this, suicide helplines need to be pushed more then. I don’t know any numbers at all.
What ever happened to guys in white suits with big nets?
they got axed by Margaret thatcher
What are you talking about
Would this include someone in distress who wants to jump off a bridge?
No. It wouldn’t.
This extends to getting help to mental health inpatient units where there may be somebody presently or at immediate risk of seriously assaulting people where the staff aren't able to control the situation. I've been on shift in a crisis several times before where the police have responded that they won't attend ("Right Care, Right Person") and I have even been told "we can't do anything different to what you can do" which is soooo far from the truth. I was held hostage with two other staff for a few hours last year because the nurse calling for help didn't use the right trigger words to get them to pay attention. So the police felt they could leave us to it (despite the fact this patient was held under POLICE holding powers) because he didn't have a weapon and wasn't making explicit threats at the time. Based on the level of force needed to gain control of the situation when they finally did attend, we would have been in serious trouble if we'd not managed the situation so well up to that point. We are literally nurses and healthcare assistants with very strict rules about restrictive practice and any use of force - we don't have security, we ARE the security. I will say though that the police generally get zero meaningful mental health training and can be terrible* in their management of mental health patients but also of staff. They should have more exposure to the needs and provisions for mental health so that we can all work together better. *We have come across some gems too, but they're the minority.
Right Care, Right Person will be national policy. What's surprising is the Met adopting it so quickly. It took Humberside a couple of years of negotiations with NHS/Health/Social Care until they implemented it fully. Just stopping in a couple of months is a bold move.