Closer links between police and health services can improve experiences for people in mental health crisis

Tighter working partnerships between health professionals and police services are likely to improve the care of people who come into contact with police during mental health crises. Click here for study from National Institute for Health Research

What police “picking up the pieces” of mental health services don’t tell you

Deaths of people suffering mental health crises in custody are going up. Click here to read New Statesman article

Poverty is at the heart of mental health crisis

There has been a massive increase in calls to the Metropolitan police involving mental health problems, with as many as one every five minutes. Insp Brown from the College of Police attributes this to cuts in mental health services and of course this will have a clearly adverse effect, but what is the source of all this distress? It is generally conceded that poverty can be both a determinant and a consequence of poor mental health.

Police calls for mental health issues up by a third

Calls to the Metropolitan Police about mental health have risen by almost a third in five years, figures show. 

There were 115,000 calls with a mental health element to London's police force in the 12 months to July.

That compares to 86,520 in 2011-12 and equates to about 315 a day.

Call-outs included to people involved in or suspected of crime, those in crisis, support to other emergency services and local council health assessments.

Forty thousand of the calls had a police unit assigned - or sent out - to them, the detail showed.
The calls were a mixture of emergency 999 and 101 calls.

Read more HERE.

New guidance on police support for incidents on mental health wards

The MoU on Police Use of Restraint in Mental Health & Learning Disability Settings aims to clarify when the police might take the lead and when they ought to hand management back over to care staff, writes Errol Archer

Staff who work on mental health wards, particularly psychiatric intensive care units, will be trained in de-escalation and control and restraint.

Exceptionally, health care professionals will require the assistance of the police to provide care safely to people experiencing acute mental illness.

These types of incidents most commonly occur either during the course of an assessment of the person for detention under the Mental Health Act or whilst the person is acutely unwell following detention and whilest being detained on a PICU.

Any mental health ward managers as well as other staff will be interested to read the Memorandum of Understanding on the Police Use of Restraint in Mental Health & Learning Disability Settings.

New rules on when mental health trusts should call police

Providers will be encouraged to sign up to a new agreement on when to use police interventions in mental health and learning disability settings.

The memorandum of understanding, published today, sets out what the police and healthcare professionals are expected to do and how to manage restraint and restrictive practices in mental health and learning disability inpatient units and places of safety.

The document sets out guidance that police should not be called to use restraint or restrictive measures in clinical interventions unless in exceptional circumstances. These include:

• healthcare professionals have been injured, compromising their ability to carry out restraint;
• there are not enough healthcare staff to carry out the restraint safely in a timely manner;
• an immediate risk to life or of serious harm;
• a risk of serious damage to property; or
• the patient is using an offensive weapon or has taken a hostage.