Anthony O'Brien: Associate Professor in Mental Health Nursing at University of Waikato on Police dialling back on mental health callouts

From today, Police are dialling back the number of mental health callouts they will attend.

Phase One of the reduced service will see Police complete faster handovers in the Emergency Department.

Transport requests and attendance at mental health facilities will need to meet a higher threshold.

Four phases are set to be implemented by September next year.

Associate Professor in Mental Health Nursing at University of Waikato Anthony O’Brien tells Ryan Bridge police will now negotiate with health services whether they feel their presence is required on callouts where they are requested.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
From today, police are dialing back the number of mental
health callouts that they will attend. Phase one of the
reduced services will see police complete faster handovers in the
emergency department, transport requests and attendance at mental health facilities
will need to meet a higher threshold. This is happening
from today. All four phases set to be implemented by
September next year. Anthony O'Brien is the Associate professor in

(00:22):
Mental health Nursing at the University of Wykoto. He's with
US Live this morning.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Good morning, Good morning, Ryan Cura, Thank.

Speaker 1 (00:29):
You for being with me. What can you just tell
me practically, if someone is having a mental health crisis today,
what will change?

Speaker 2 (00:38):
Well, that will depend on the type of mental health
crisis they're having. Ryan, That's a term that covers a
broad range of experiences that people might have. Sometimes the
mental health crisis that necessitate the involvement of police to
safety reasons. Other times the mental health crisis that can
be managed by primary mental health services or primary health services,

(00:59):
or by mental health space services. And that's where most
mental health crises are managed. They're not actually managed by police.
So for some people there be no change. I guess
where there'll be a change will be if it's a
situation where police feel that their presence is not necessary,
they'll want to negotiate that if they're asked to attend.

Speaker 1 (01:20):
Right, does the hospital have a team of psychologists or
specialists that could go attend an event outside of the
hospital or are they based there and don't move?

Speaker 2 (01:30):
So the mental health services are predominantly community based, so
they are mobile, they're not based in the hospital, they're
based in community clinics. That's right throughout the country. That's
been the case for the best part of thirty years now.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
But is that for emergency responses?

Speaker 2 (01:46):
Yeah, sure, that's for emergency responses here.

Speaker 1 (01:49):
So why have the police been doing it then?

Speaker 2 (01:54):
So once again you have to think about mental health
events being a broad range of different time types of events,
and some do require the presence of a mental health service.
Some don't, and it's the one and the presence of police,
and some don't. The majority don't, the vast majority. So
the ones that police and mental health services respond to together,

(02:18):
or that mental health ask for a police presence, they
are the ones where as I understand it, there is
no there's no commitment to say we're not going to
do that anymore. It's the ones where police feel their
presence is not necessary, where in the past they have
attended feeling that they may be able to offer some

(02:38):
help support. They're the ones that they're not going to
be attending.

Speaker 1 (02:41):
Is the sky going to fall in? Today? Is something
terrible going to happen? Do you think because of this change?

Speaker 2 (02:48):
I don't think the sky is are going to fall in.
I know that health and police have been negotiating about
better managing police resource responding to people with mental health
crisis in the community for some time. This has been
going on for a number of years, so it's not new.
There is a memorandum of understanding between police and mental
health that is still in place, or police and health

(03:09):
that's still in place, so any changes will need to
be kind of negotiated through that memorandum of understanding. And
as I understand it, those discussions are happening between police
and health. So everybody's doing everything they can to kind
of manage this change. And I think health and health
we recognize that there's a lot of calls on police
time and we don't want police to be unnecessarily involved.

Speaker 1 (03:31):
Well, yeah, I think most people think they've probably got
much better things to be doing in some of those cases. Anthony,
thank you very much for your time. Anthony O'Brian, Associate
Professor of Mental Health Nursing, University of Whitekatzo. For more
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