Mental health crisis: Met police to stop attending emergency calls
The Metropolitan police chief has stated the force will no longer attend emergency mental health calls despite charities claiming people who require support should be ‘at the heart of any change to the support they receive in a crisis’.
Announced on Sunday, the Met police have stated that from September they will no longer be attending 999 emergency calls that are related to mental health unless there is an ‘immediate threat to life’.
In a letter, Sir Mark Rowley, the Met Police Chief, claimed he will order his officers not to attend thousands of calls they get every year to deal with such incidents. According to figures from the Mental Health Foundation, more than 15 million people, 30% of the UK population, live with one or more long-term health conditions and more than four million of them also have mental health problems.
Sir Rowley, who has made the claim in a bid to divert officers back into their core role of fighting crime, has given health and social care services a deadline of 31st August before the force starts its ban.
The Met chief has also stated patients who require medical experts are being failed when a police officer turns up. However, the plan could cause consternation among ambulance workers, paramedics and NHS staff who are already under pressure as a result of cuts and at a time when mental health services are already stretched.
Mark Rowley, who is chief of Britain’s largest police force, included data within his letter from a national police study that highlights officers spend almost a million hours a year waiting in hospitals for mental health patients to be assessed, the equivalent of attending 500,000 domestic abuse incidents or 60,000 burglaries.
Reacting to this news, Sarah Hughes, CEO of the mental health charity Mind, said: ‘People with mental health problems should be at the heart of any change to the support they receive in a crisis.
‘It is right to say that when people are in a mental health crisis, they are often at their most vulnerable, so really need the right support. It is also right to say that mental health is core police business, for example, only the police can publicly section people in mental health crisis.
‘The police can only properly help people with the right support from the whole system. The NHS needs sufficient resourcing so that people in crisis are treated quickly and in a therapeutic environment.
‘Mental health services have been chronically underfunded for decades and much more needs to be done to bring services to the standard where everybody can get the support they need from the NHS.
‘Any changes to supporting people in a mental health crisis need to be thought through carefully and collectively so that no one is left without support. New plans need to be rolled out with enough time to make sure strong partnerships are built at a local level so that people with mental health problems don’t pay the price for this kind of change.’
Image: AJ Colores