Spike in mental health 111 calls

Police are struggling under the weight of spiking mental health demand, with a new report revealing Tasman district police were besieged by a 250 per cent increase in calls from 2009 to 2016.

Patients and families say police have become the default crisis mental health response, as health services fail to meet burgeoning mental distress.

In Wellington, Constable Sally Wiffen spent five days of a six-day working week, waiting in the hospital emergency department with a person in severe mental distress.

While police suicide callouts increase by about 9 per cent a year, a new report shows 111 calls for the next tier of mental distress rose 77 per cent between 2009 and 2016. The Tasman district was deluged with a 257 per cent increase.

Tasman police district prevention manager Inspector Tim Crawford said one person experiencing a phase of acute mental distress could make more than 20 calls a month.

While his district’s figures could be inflated by mis-coding of young people’s behavioural issues as mental health, his staff were dealing with increasing drug and alcohol issues, young people feeling socially isolated, social media issues and violence or trauma related to dysfunctional families.

Police were working with mental health teams to devise better health plans for frequent callers.

‘‘Police are often not needed in terms of the first response for a mental health episode. But people often call police as a last resort – they’ve called their GP, they’ve called the crisis line and not got the response they wanted.’’

While lower-level mental health calls plateaued in 2016, attempted suicide callouts increased by 15 to 20 per cent, pushing burglaries or assaults down the priority list, Crawford said.

Analysis of the police calls studied for report found one-fifth of people calling 111 during a mental health episode had tried mental health services first.

Waikato mother Jane Stevens remembers the look of betrayal on her son Nicky’s face when a policeman took him away, after she could not get hold of a crisis mental health team.

‘‘I think it’s kind of the default – because there’s no effective psychiatric emergency service in this country.’’

Police mental health boss Matthew Morris said a uniformed officer turning up uninvited could inflame an already difficult situation.

While police needed to attend the most acute mental health events, they were increasingly being called to much less serious incidents. ‘‘I’m not saying we shouldn’t be doing any of that, I’m saying we probably shouldn’t be doing all of it.’’

A new service, rolled out nationwide in November, should help divert mental health-related 111 calls to nurses who could refer people to local health services or help them over the phone.

Both health and police staff also advocated a joint-response crisis mental health service that would bring together ambulance, police and mental health workers to provide care without the stigma of uniformed police.

Announced in August 2017 by the previous National government, the initiative is now on hold as new Health Minister David Clark considers whether to support it.

The Health Ministry’s deputy director of mental health, Ian Soosay, said mental health services were under growing pressure, and crisis response teams were the ‘‘pinch-point’’ of that.

However, more specialist services were not the answer.

Mental health was this generation’s heart disease and required a whole-of-society approach, said Soosay.