THE number of mental health incidents dealt with by police has risen by more than a quarter in four years, recent research from the BBC has shown.<\/p>\n
There were 494,159 mental health related incidents in 2018, a 28% increase from the 385,206 incidents recorded in 2014.<\/p>\n
The NHS needs to do more to lead on these incidents, but the police service will always have a role, the Essex Police Federation Chairman has said.<\/p>\n
Steve Taylor said: \u201cWhenever people are in crisis and they need help, we should never feel like we have to turn them away and say, \u2018It\u2019s not our job, it\u2019s not what we\u2019re here to do\u2019. But I do accept we shouldn\u2019t be leading on it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI do accept that the NHS is the primary care provider for people in mental health crisis. But there\u2019s no escaping that certain serious elements of that crisis are going to involve the police, and we can\u2019t simply devolve ourselves of that because we\u2019ve got a lot on our plate.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo yes, it is an issue for the police to tackle. But equally it\u2019s an issue the NHS should ideally be leading on. We should be working with the NHS as a partner in this, and being innovative as to how we achieve that. But yeah, it is something that we have to continue tackling.\u201d<\/p>\n
The police pick up a mental-health related call on average every two minutes, a report by HMIC found last year.<\/p>\n
Steve added: \u201cWhether or not an incident\u2019s classified as a crime incident or a mental health incident or a social services incident, whatever it\u2019s classified at the end of the day we must never forget that at the front end of that cry for help, it\u2019s exactly that, it\u2019s people that need help. So it\u2019s important that when they need help, we are there to help in whatever way we can, be that light-touch, signposting to other partners, or taking more of that on ourselves, and it\u2019s fair to say that in recent years we have taken a lot of mental health work in particular on because of gaps in the NHS\u2019s provision. That\u2019s just a reality.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"