Police and Mental Illness: Increased Interactions

And Mental illness : Increased InteractionsReasons for Increased InteractionsAcross North America, a number of changes have led to increasing interactionbetween Police and persons with Mental illness . A shift from institutionalized careto community-based care has resulted in more persons with Mental illness in thecommunity. Unfortunately, community support systems have not received suffi-cient funding to grow proportionately to the Increased need. Existing crisis re-sponse services (crisis lines, Mental health teams, hospital emergency wards, forexample) are limited in scope and are often not well integrated. Reductions inhospital beds and services result in hospital admission only for those in acute crisis,and, even then, only for very short periods of factors and the general lack of understanding and awareness about men-tal illness result in many people with Mental illness in crisis coming into contactwith Police .

The results for persons with mental illness can be serious: long delays in receiving necessary diagnosis and treatment, unnecessary and damaging trauma, ... 35% of Canada’s homeless population have a mental illness. Many be-come isolated, homeless, hungry, and poor due to the symptoms of their illness.

Tags:

  Police, Mental, Persons, Illness, Homeless, Serious, Mental illness

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