Police Mental Health Callouts Rise By A Quarter

THE number of mental health incidents dealt with by the police has risen by more than a quarter in four years, new figures have found.

There were 385,206 incidents flagged as mental health-related in 2014, compared with 494,159, last year – a national rise of 28% – according to research from the BBC.

BBC Radio 5 Live spent a shift with Essex Police’s street triage unit – a team of officers and mental health professionals based in Harlow, Colchester, Basildon and Rochford that provide urgent help to those in crisis.

Steve Taylor, Essex Police Federation Chairman, said: “There is a black hole in mental health services in our county, left by austerity, that means the NHS isn’t doing perhaps what we want it to do with mental health, with people in mental health crisis, and the police service has been left needing to fill that gap because elements of mental health crisis touch on elements of policing.

“It is not primarily what we’re there to do, but it is a service that our communities require. It is something that we do find ourselves doing more and more frequently, and it’s an area for which we’re under scrutiny from the Independent Office of Police Conduct.

“So it’s important that we do do these things, that we are spending our time thinking outside the box and finding creative solutions to problems that we do face, and that is really important. While it’s unorthodox and unusual, it is a valuable use of our time.

“A bit of extra funding for the NHS wouldn’t go amiss, but we don’t want to get drawn into a debate about whose problem this is to fix, because that is when people can fall through the cracks and that is something that we can never allow as the service of last resort.”