We’re now at the point where NHS staff on social media are openly reporting their local police as saying things like, “We don’t do mental health” amidst the continuing narrative the police are not the right agency to help those of us who need mental health support. Of course, the police are not mental health professionals and don’t (or shouldn’t) provide mental health support in any real or meaningful sense. That said, it’s probably not really correct to say the police are or ever were called to deal with mental health – the police are called to deal with the threat, risk or conflict arising from a number of situations that involve many things which are not really police work, but which become police work because of the threat, risk and conflict.
Think about a civil debt, for example: officers are regularly asked to attended incidents such as a man who has agreed to sell a car where the buyer had given most of the asking price as he collected the car, on agreement he’d pay another, smaller sum within a couple of weeks. Because the second payment had not materialised, the seller tried to report the car as stolen and became very frustrated at the explanation the police had no jurisdiction because the car had simply not been stolen. The property having been willingly transferred, albeit pending one more payment, the outstanding payment is now a civil debt (unless any liability has been dishonestly evaded in something amounting to fraud). Someone not paying you fully for the goods you’ve allowed them to take is not theft – it’s just a debt they now owe you.
So the man decided to attend a location where he hoped to find the buyer and encourage him to pay up. There’s actually nothing wrong with that – he’s entitled to try and lay claim to the sum he believes he’s owed, but what he’s not allowed to do whilst doing that, is threaten to damage property or to take back the car unless that sum is paid. Once those threats of damage are made or once the car is retaken, the man commits a criminal offence and it becomes police business – not because of the civil debt, but because of the threat, risk and conflict now introduced in to the situation by the man committing criminal offences arising within this civil dispute. For those who are wondering, the legal route to recovery of the sum is to lodge a claim in the small claims court and seek redress through the courts. Yes, I realise that’s probably a pain and it involves paying a fee to lodge the claim, but it’s the route to debt recovery from others.
NOT MENTAL HEALTH
Now re-apply all of that to the ‘mental health’ issues the police are saying they no longer deal with. The police were never really called to deal with someone’s mental health (except in the sense that any human contact with people who can give a little time for those of us in a difficult place can be helpful sometimes). They were called to manage the threat, risk or conflict arising from someone’s mental health or their relationships because of their condition. It could be someone has seriously deteriorated and are likely to seriously self-injure themselves – there’s now a threat and a risk. It could be mental health services have secured a warrant from a Magistrate to gain access to a property where it is being denied – there’s a conflict, as well as some risk by engaging with it. It could be someone has absconded from a hospital whilst ‘sectioned’ and there are immediate risks to life where they need to be found.
It is for the threat, risk and conflict the police are called – not the background factors, whether that be mental health, the civil debt or anything else. Plenty of other examples abound:
The police are called to situations where parents are struggling to make sure their child stays indoors at night. That’s not a police matter, inherently, but if the parent is fearful the child is going out because they’re being groomed for sexual or criminal exploitation, then there’s threat, risk and conflict – it’s now police business to at least some degree because of the safeguarding implications and the criminal aspects. It could be the child not doing their homework has broken out in to full blown row where violence is likely – then and only then, it becomes a police matter. Not because of the curfew or the homework, but because of the threat, risk or conflict from, the exploitation or the violence.
WE DON’T DO MENTAL HEALTH
This is quite a dangerous line to take.
I was once an expert witness in a case where attending police officers, called to a situation by the ambulance service, got out of their car and one of them asked in a frustrated voice, “Why have you called us to this? – we don’t do mental health incidents”. As it happened, once the other officer had fully understood what the ambulance service were asking, it was an incident where the police had no formal role or legal powers. It wasn’t an immediate risk to life situation and the proper intervention to safeguard someone the paramedics thought needed further assistance was an Approved Mental Health Professional and a Mental Health Act assessment. The officer advised the paramedics of this, quite correctly and the police left, but the paramedic wrote down on their PRF form that the first officer had made this frustrated “We don’t do mental health” type comment. It’s never going to help, especially if the incident in fact had turned out to be one where police intervention in support of the ambulance crew was necessary.
So given doctors and others are now openly saying that the message from plenty of front-line officers, is “we don’t do mental health”, I submit there’s some reflection to be done and some thinking. Chief Constables who appeared last week at the Health and Social Care Select Committee in Parliament were at pains to argue that RCRP does not involve the police pulling away and when questions were put about situations involving threat, risk and conflict, they were quick to argue that is and will always remain police business. The example used by one MP was a situation where a family specifically requested an ambulance, not the police, to a situation where a man was becoming threatening with a knife, having been discharged from detention under the Mental Health Act only the day before. The Chief Constable of the West Midlands was immediately clear: that’s police business and officers should attend on ‘blues and twos’ to mitigate the risk and then allow the ambulance crew to do what they needed. So I suspect he’d be frustrated to hear whatever stories sit behind those NHS colleagues on social media being told “we don’t do mental health”.
Be very careful, folks: this stuff is inexplicably complicated and situations turn specifically on their merits. Attitudes such as “we don’t do mental health” are extremely over-simplistic and likely to lead to perverse or untoward outcomes. I can imagine, in this newly emerging world, our colleagues in health who think police intervention is justified, will be making the calls they feel they need to and then making notes about the call handler or police officer’s response because they will be as aware as anyone else of the potential for things to go awry. Whilst it may be literally or strictly true to suggest “we don’t do mental health”, we do threat, risk and conflict all day every day and that’s precisely what the police service exists for. There is a lot of threat, risk and conflict in various incidents which have someone’s mental health issues at their heart but that fact is not what should determine whether the police go to the incident or not – it’s about threat, risk and conflict: always.
Be careful not to miss that.
Winner of the President’s Medal,
the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
Winner of the Mind Digital Media Award
All opinions expressed are my own – they do not represent the views of any organisation.
(c) Michael Brown, 2023
I try to keep this blog up to date, but inevitably over time, amendments to the law as well as court rulings and other findings from inquests and complaints processes mean it is difficult to ensure all the articles and pages remain current. Please ensure you check all legal issues in particular and take appropriate professional advice where necessary.
Government legislation website – www.legislation.gov.uk
Mental Health Cop 