Choose non-police action for mentally ill
The videos are shocking. Daniel Prude, Walter Wallace and Angelo Quinto, all Black, Indigenous and People of Color experiencing mental health crises and being forcibly confronted by police. Their families called 911 for help. Now all three are dead. There must be a better solution.
Changes in crisis responses are coming slowly. New York City has announced plans for a non-police pilot response program for mental health crises, which would involve emergency medical service personnel and mental health experts as the dispatch team. Similar initiatives are being discussed or planned in other jurisdictions around the country, including Rochester, where Prude was killed, and Antioch, Calif., where Quinto was killed.
Given that people with severe mental illnesses, and especially those who are BIPOC, are at substantially increased risk of death when they interact with police, we applaud efforts to implement non-police alternatives for crisis responses. In a new report, in collaboration with Disability Rights New York, we recommend that communities begin the process of developing non-police responses to mental and behavioral health crises.
It’s not enough to simply change who responds. We must also change how they respond and the individual treatment options. These programs need to be grounded in an intersectional anti-stigma and anti-racist framework, taking into consideration that people diagnosed with severe mental illnesses (who make up roughly 5-7 percent of the overall population) are members of the community, and that mental health crises can happen to anyone — including police officers, as alarming trends in police officer suicide show.
Recent statements by politicians and media advocate for reform, but suggest the mental health system replace the criminal legal system by imposing “coercive care” upon those in crisis. This hearkens back to the oft-told, but unacceptable view that people with mental illness should be returned to long-term institutionalization — preventing community participation and analogous to incarceration.
For example, New York City mayoral candidate Eric Adams recently recommended an expansion of involuntary community mental health treatment for people with mental illness, as a way of improving crisis responses.
These discussions are inherently marginalizing of people diagnosed with mental illnesses, especially those
who are BIPOC and members of other oppressed social identity groups. These same groups are disproportionately affected by homelessness and poverty, and more likely to be treated with “coercive care” approaches. Efforts must be taken to ensure that well-intentioned alternative response models do not become coercive or punitive, but facilitate a process of access to services. Given the subjective nature of clinical judgments, we must be wary of how involving crisis responders in the involuntary treatment process could become biased and is inherently coercive. A change in crisis responses is not enough. Community mental healthcare must equally be bolstered to reduce the prevalence of crisis incidents in the first place.
We recommend that true alternatives proceed from an intersectional anti-stigma and anti-racist perspective that acknowledges mental health problems are part of the human experience and can occur to anyone. Community members should consider what they would want to happen if they (or their loved ones) were to experience a mental health crisis.
Proceeding from this perspective will lead communities to consider approaches that involve a combination of mental health professionals trained in compassionate crisis intervention and peer specialists, who can provide non-coercive options for alleviating crises. Hospitalization will be an option for some, but many will choose other routes, such as going to a crisis respite center or visiting drop-in mental health or peer support service centers. Although police may become involved in some interactions, mental health professionals and peer specialists should remain present to reduce the potentially negative impacts of policing on persons in crisis.
The time is now for reform. We need to show those with mental illness that they are important community members, not people to be shunned and shuttered away; to be helped, not hurt. So the next time a loved one calls 911, the day ends with the promise of a better life, not death.
▶ Philip Yanos is author of “Written Off: Mental Health Stigma and the Loss of Human Potential ” and a professor of psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Kevin Nadal is author of “Queering Law and Order: LGBTQ Communities and the Criminal Justice System ” and a professor of psychology at John Jay. Gina Sissoko and Therese Todd are PH.D. students in clinical psychology at the CUNY Graduate Center.