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Editorial: Mentally ill need more support

People with mental-health issues are using an increasing amount of police time and resources. That’s nothing new — what’s remarkable is that nothing gets done about it.

People with mental-health issues are using an increasing amount of police time and resources. That’s nothing new — what’s remarkable is that nothing gets done about it.

The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, meeting in Winnipeg last week, has called on governments to provide more support for the mentally ill. It’s a call that should be heeded, for reasons of compassion and economy.

“Mental-health calls are a large part of the work we do,” said Bowen Osoko, spokesman for the Victoria Police Department.

He said mental illness is a significant factor in many calls not listed as mental-health calls, such as calls from suicidal people and requests to check on someone’s welfare.

“It is hard to fully grasp the scale of the impact that psychiatric illness has on the department and our resources,” Osoko said.

The average time an officer can expect to wait when taking a psychiatric patient to emergency is two hours. Medical patients can take priority, forcing the officers and the psychiatric patient to wait to as much as six hours.

“That is two to six hours in a shift that one or two officers are not on the road,” Osoko said.

Because police field so many calls where mental health, not primarily criminal behaviour, is the issue, the region has set up teams and programs to deal with the issues. One of these is the Integrated Mobile Crisis Response Team to deal with emergency mental-health issues. In the first six months of 2013, it dealt with more than 2,200 referrals.

The Victoria Integrated Community Outreach Team was created to help high-risk people who suffer from addictions or mental illness, and who are more involved with the justice system. A few people can take up a hugely disproportionate amount of police time. Over a six-year period, for example, a mere 10 people were responsible for nearly 3,000 negative contacts with police. Many of these people have mental-health issues.

Not enough money is available to fund crisis teams 24 hours a day, so police “become the de-facto mental-health workers between midnight and 8 a.m.,” Osoko said.

Funding should at least be provided so these teams are always available.

Psychiatric beds and spaces for addictions treatment are scarce. As governments restrict funding for mental health and addictions treatment, the problems spill out onto the streets. Mental illness is a major factor in homelessness and addiction, and thus, the crime rate.

Money can ostensibly be saved in cutting back on prevention, treatment and care, but the cost is just pushed downstream. When people with problems have nowhere else to go, they too often end up involved with the police, voluntarily or otherwise, in circumstances that are less than ideal.

Governments like to talk about getting tough on crime, and that’s just fine. But providing housing, intervention programs and psychiatric treatment will do more for reducing the crime rate than harsher penalties and stricter enforcement.