The police are ill-equipped to deal with mental health crises.
This is neither a radical idea, nor is it a new development. News stories in the past few years made it clear that the police don’t have the training to handle non-life-threatening situations. We’ve seen police brutality toward Black people, and disabled people, turn deadly — and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
As for the encounters that don’t end in senseless murder, many still result in violence or discriminatory police behavior, especially towards people of color and people with mental illness. I experienced this type of interaction first-hand in college when I became severely suicidal. After I made a call to the crisis center, I still felt extremely suicidal. I almost attempted, so I called 911, thinking that it would keep me safe.
I wish that I hadn’t.
Thankfully, my encounter with the police didn’t end in violence, but it did make it clear how awful the American mental health system was. The police told me that I could either voluntarily commit myself to the hospital, or they would insist that the hospital staff forcibly commit me. Basically, I had to go to the hospital no matter what, and “voluntary commitment” was an illusion of choice.
Needless to say, my stay in the hospital wasn’t great (which is another story). But even prior to that incident, I felt like receiving an ultimatum about my mental health threatened me. While suicide isn’t illegal in the United States — as it unfortunately is in some other countries — it’s treated like an illegal act far too often. To tell the truth, hearing that I had no choice but to spend days trapped in the hospital made me feel like a criminal.
I’m no mental health expert, but I doubt that forcibly committing someone who’s already struggling with suicidal thoughts is the best way to help them recover. In fact, forcing hospitalization on a suicidal person could make the situation worse and lead to guilt for “causing” problems. Knowing that someone will physically restrain you if you don’t willingly go to the hospital could make suicidal thoughts even stronger.
Both people and crisis lines will tell you to call 911 if someone is severely suicidal. But,due to the risk of ill-equipped police, it may not be the best approach. Some crisis lines, including 988, will direct you to 911 if needed. But then, you may have a traumatic encounter with police officers who lack mental health training.
This isn’t to say that no police officers can properly handle suicidality and other mental health crises. I’m sure that there are stories of police handling a suicidal person’s case well, with the knowledge, care, and respect that someone in a health crisis needs. But I’ve also heard stories where police don’t intervene properly — and some are even worse than my own. And, if we consider stories where police encounters with mentally ill people take a deadly turn, we see that law enforcement’s overall approach to mental health care needs to change.
So, what can we do to solve this problem?
At the very least, we should include mental health professionals on first responder teams. Seeing a mental health professional on a regular basis is great, but it’s not always enough to prevent a crisis. We need knowledgeable professionals to respond to crisis calls. Therapists and other mental health professionals have extensive mental health training and regularly evaluate clients for suicide risk. That makes them invaluable first responders.
This solution may not solve all cases of violence against people in crisis. It’s going to take a shift in how we view mental health struggles too. But our current system clearly isn’t working, and we need to change. Most police don’t have enough mental health expertise to reliably work with suicidal or mentally ill people in crisis states.
We have firefighters as first responders for fires, and we have paramedics as first responders for physical injuries. So it makes sense that we have psychologists as first responders for mental health crises.
At the end of the day, mentally ill people are people first.
We need first responders to understand this. One in five American adults has a mental illness, so we need to better help them through emergencies. At the end of the day, people with mental illness deserve to be treated with kindness, empathy, and respect. This is especially true in our hardest moments.
Photo by camilo jimenez on Unsplash
