Police team up for crisis services

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According to the Ontario branch of the Canadian Mental Health Association, one in five Ontarians will suffer from a mental illness in their lifetime, and mental illness can affect anyone, anytime, anywhere.
Further, the Canada Safety Council reports that since 1992, the number of suicide deaths in Canada has increasingly outnumbered the number of road fatalities – in 2003 by 26 per cent. More than 90 per cent of suicide victims have a psychiatric illness, most often depression, at the time of their death, in many cases undiagnosed, untreated, or both – and one in 10 people living with schizophrenia dies by suicide.
These numbers indicate an ever growing need for mental health education, understanding, outreach and support.This week, the Peel Regional Police took a major step in the right direction with the announcement of a new mental health Crisis Outreach and Support Team (COAST) program for Mississauga.
The program, introduced at a press conference yesterday, partners mental health workers with plainclothes police officers to offer mobile mental health support. The teams will respond to people in a “mental health crisis”, including those who have threatened to harm themselves or others.
Acting Deputy Police Chief Dan McDonald said at the press conference, that police officers come in contact every day with people with mental health illnesses, and while they have had some training, police officers are not specifically trained as mental health professionals.
The Psychiatric Patient Advocate Office (PPAO) in Ontario furthers this point on its website. This agency is the largest provincial mental health advocacy program in Canada, and works to protect the legal and civil rights of patients in hospitals with a mental health unit and of individuals living in the community who are being considered for treatment orders.
The PPAO website states, “People fail to understand that many consumers of mental health services are either fearful of or do not trust the police… a culture of understanding and acceptance of mental illness is essential if we are to be an inclusive and caring community, not just for the police, but for all members of the community”.
The pairing of a police officer with a mental health professional to deal with individuals suffering a mental health crisis therefore makes perfect professional, and humanitarian sense.

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