Abstract
BackgroundPolice mental health street triage is an increasingly common intervention when dealing with police incidents in which there is a suspected mental health component. We conducted a systematic review of street triage interventions with three aims. First, to identify papers reporting on models of co-response police mental health street triage. Second, to identify the characteristics of service users who come in to contact with these triage services. Third, to evaluate the effectiveness of co-response triage services.MethodsWe conducted a systematic review. We searched the following databases: Ovid MEDLINE, Embase, PsycINFO, EBSCO CINAHL, Scopus, Thompson Reuters Web of Science Core Collection, The Cochrane Library, ProQuest National Criminal Justice Reference Service s, ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, EThoS, and OpenGrey. We searched reference and citation lists. We also searched for other grey literature through Google, screening the first 100 PDFs of each of our search terms. We performed a narrative synthesis of our results.ResultsOur search identified 11,553 studies. After screening, 26 were eligible. Over two-thirds (69%) had been published within the last 3 years. We did not identify any randomised control trials. Results indicated that street triage might reduce the number of people taken to a place of safety under S136 of the Mental Health Act where that power exists, or reduce the use of police custody in other jurisdictions.ConclusionsThere remains a lack of evidence to evaluate the effectiveness of street triage and the characteristics, experience, and outcomes of service users. There is also wide variation in the implementation of the co-response model, with differences in hours of operation, staffing, and incident response.
Highlights
Police mental health street triage is an increasingly common intervention when dealing with police incidents in which there is a suspected mental health component
The general aim of these triage models is to introduce mental health expertise during the encounter in order to reduce the likelihood of the person in crisis being detained in police custody, and to reduce the distress caused to persons during these incidents [8]
There are two main overarching models of triage: Police officers who have special mental health training, or a co-response model where mental health professionals assist the police during incidents either in person or remotely from a control room
Summary
Police mental health street triage is an increasingly common intervention when dealing with police incidents in which there is a suspected mental health component. In the United Kingdom (UK), estimates of the proportion of police incidents linked to mental health crises range from as little as 2% to nearly 50% [1, 2] This has been increasing over recent years both in the UK and internationally [2,3,4,5,6], yet police often feel that they lack the skills to appropriately support those in crisis [6, 7]. There are two main overarching models of triage: Police officers who have special mental health training (often referred to as Crisis Intervention Teams – CIT), or a co-response model where mental health professionals assist the police during incidents either in person or remotely from a control room
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