Earlier this year, a review in to policing and mental health in New South Wales, Australia was published after a succession of incidents which caused concern amongst the public and in Coroners’ Courts. Amongst other observations, the report recommended senior officers from New South Wales look at the UK’s “Right Care, Right Person” programme with a view to doing something similar, as they already are in New Zealand.
Amongst the justifications for this was the observation, often heard in the United Kingdom, police officers can unnecessarily exacerbate and escalate incidents by their mere presence. This is definitely true, they can – there has been criticism in the past where the police resort to coercion where others believe de-escalation should be preferred has proved controversial.
All that said, a recent discussion with an Approved Mental Health Professional involved them expressing concern about the police pull back from certain partnership functions. Her experience was, overall, officers tended to bring something positive to difficult situations which would be impossible to replace, even with greater resources to convey patients from the place of Mental Health Act application to admission.
SCHRODINGER
The paradox of these conflicting viewpoints is that they’re both true and you won’t know which of them will play out in a situation, unless you expose the situation to police officers and see what happens. Of course, by the time you’ve done that, if you have introduced a negative feature which is only going to make things worse, it’s usually too late to do anything about it by the time you realise the impact of what you’ve done.
So it’s all very well fearing unnecessary, if unintentional escalation but you can’t necessarily avoid it, where your situation is more serious. It’s all very well believing officers tend to keep a natural ‘lid’ on things by their presence, which then makes admissions processes easier, but if you rely on the police to bring that, only to find things escalate through the roof, you’re rather shot yourself in the foot.
The principle of proportionality is worth bearing in mind – as all AMHPs, police officers and others should when dealing with business which has obvious potential to engage human rights laws. Most human rights can be interfered with by the state but its a fundamental part of the jurisprudence such interference must be proportionate to the situation.
ELSEWHERE IN POLICING
You can’t just say “it might exacerbate the situation”, even if is not just possible but likely. Where a 999 call is received about someone armed with a weapon, I’m struggling to think of a situation where there should not be a police response. The fact the person who is the subject of the call might find police involvement intimidating or a factor which causes them to (further) lose their emotional regulation is regrettable, but where risks are at the higher end of things, a police response is a proportionate response to the risk of harm.
Repeat the same crisis situation without a weapon and you have a very different assessment indeed – suddenly, it becomes a situation which may well benefit from a non-police response, be that paramedics or mental health nurses.
Policing is, by definition, a restrictive intervention and we know the best mental health care is predicated on reducing or removing restrictive interventions. I’d go further and point out that in well over twenty years of work on this topic, every time I hear mental health professionals of any kind talking about what good mental health care looks like, they tend to describe something which is the very opposite of policing, so yes: we should be trying to reduce police involvement in mental health care responses without pretending this can always happen and without pretending that escalation of difficult situations can always be avoided.
You won’t know the impact of policing on patients or crisis situations until you’ve let it happen and it’s too late to reverse your decision.
So you had best make sure you can justify attendance as proportionate either way.
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, 2025
I am not a police officer.
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 