The Police as Street Corner Psychiatrists and Their Effectiveness in that Role

The Police as Street Corner Psychiatrists and Their Effectiveness in that Role

The mentally disordered only come into contact with the police when

their unusual behaviour is noticed by the public and with that call

the police for help. Automatically the mentally disordered are

labelled as bad or criminals instead of mad people who do need help.

If someone who is suffering from a mental disorder gets into a dispute

or is causing public disorder the police are called to the scene and

it is there they have to look at the person and 'diagnose' if the

suspect has a mental disorder. The police have to decide if the person

is going to be a threat to themselves or to the public if so they will

enforce section 136 from the P.A.C.E act 1984(if they want to enforce

section 136 the police are required to give a low level diagnosis.)

It's up to the police to make a decision right on the street to act.

As you can see the mentally disordered are very misunderstood.

Recently in the last couple of years, police are being trained more to

deal and help those with mental disorders. Before this new sort of

training was included in ordinary police training, police were never

taught how to communicate with not only the community but those who

were not like 'normal' people. Police were taught about section 136

but not in great detail. Now police are taught section 136 in great

detail, without section 136 patients would be charged and dealt with

by the criminal justice system instead of being detained in the mental

health system. Things have changed. In police training the first thing

they are trained to do is to initially identify suspects to have a

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...e the responsibility of the police to deal with this issue. The

police service is the only service that operates 24 hours a day 365

days a year who take on mentally disordered people, some who might be

violent. No other organisation, for example social services, would be

willing to provide such a service and until another organisation is

willing to take on this job, the police will have to continue playing

this role. You could say that the police are key figures in the mental

health services.

In conclusion, training has improved dramatically but training has to

be kept up and this can only happen is communication improved between

multi-agencies like social services, psychiatric hospitals and general

practitioners and voluntary groups like Samaritans who can help the

police in dealing with those with mental disorders.