A systematic review of co-responder models of police mental health ‘street’ triage

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 Abstracts, 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.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s12888-018-1836-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Deaths of people with serious mental disorder: An exploration of deaths in custody and fatal police contacts

“…The co-response model of police mental health triage is an established intervention in the UK, the United States, Canada and Australia (Puntis et al 2018). with ambulance and mental health services) in order to better manage police interactions with PSMDs.…”

“…The co-response model of police mental health triage is an established intervention in the UK, the United States, Canada and Australia (Puntis et al 2018). More broadly, Puntis et al (2018) conducted a systematic review of a range policing co-responder models for mental health "street" triage and concluded that co-response models were associated with reduction in the use of police powers of detention, and a qualitative research indicated that service users found co-response interventions less distressing and less criminalising than a standard police response, and also more timely access to mental health support at the time of crisis (although not at follow-up). Watson, Compton and Draine (2017) concluded that CIT could be considered evidence-based practice for officer cognitive and attitudinal outcomes, but that more research is required to address effectiveness with regard to other outcomes.…”

“…with ambulance and mental health services) in order to better manage police interactions with PSMDs. The co-response model of police mental health triage is an established intervention in the UK, the United States, Canada and Australia (Puntis et al 2018). Recent research reviews examining the effectiveness of Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) models specifically have noted the limitations in the extant studies.…”

“…Peterson and Densley (2017) conducted a systematic review of 25 CIT studies and found a mix of positive and negative results, concluding that the additional research is necessary before CIT training can be considered an evidence-based practice that should be widely implemented. More broadly, Puntis et al (2018) conducted a systematic review of a range policing co-responder models for mental health "street" triage and concluded that co-response models were associated with reduction in the use of police powers of detention, and a qualitative research indicated that service users found co-response interventions less distressing and less criminalising than a standard police response, and also more timely access to mental health support at the time of crisis (although not at follow-up). However, the effectiveness of such models with regard to outcomes for service users could not be determined due to a range of limitations in the existing research.…”

Cairns Mental Health Co‐Responder Project: Essential elements and challenges to programme implementation

“…Models for specialized responses have been developed by police to enhance community safety and improve outcomes for PMI. These include the use of Crisis Intervention Teams (CIT), also known as the Memphis model, comprised of police officers with special mental health training (Puntis et al ; Watson et al ; Watson & Fulambarker, ) or the collaborative co‐responder model which combines the skills of specially trained police and mental health clinicians working together to provide a joint response to a mental health crisis situations (Kerr et al ; Schwarzfeld et al ; Shapiro et al ). The co‐responder model of mental health community triage takes two approaches: that where the mental health professional attends the incident with the police, or alternatively, provides assistance remotely from a police control (or communications) room (Puntis et al ).…”