Experiences of police apprehension for psychosocial disability: a co-designed investigation

Participants in our study experienced a journey where they, more often than not, were harmed by police and health responses to psycho-social disability.

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Some key messages include: 

• Our participants faced a range of intersecting intimate partner violence, housing precarity, discrimination on the basis of psychiatric diagnoses, a lack of available preventative resources, not being believed and, not having their needs for urgent support addressed.

• While a small number of participants shared positive experiences of police apprehensions, these were almost always described in contrast to other exceedingly harmful experiences, rendering their positivity neutral, in that they considered themselves lucky.

• The most common responses experienced by participants were intimidation, threat and physical restraint.

• Systemic responses create harm and difficulty: many participants reported overwhelming numbers of police officers present during the apprehension, officers having a predetermined plan of how they would respond to a mental health call out with little discretion available to them, and 

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When asked what type of response they would have preferred, answers included:

• Responses led by peer workers. Workers with lived experience of emotional distress or psychosis endows them with an understanding of what communication is needed and effective in crisis moments.

• Responses should be marked by empathy, humanity, and a focus on de-escalating situations of distress.

• Trauma-informed, understanding that trauma manifests in different ways for different people.

• Responders simply engaging in conversation, asking how the person is, and communicating options would be a better response than the present procedures of restraint and involuntary transport.

• Participants wanted internationally agreed upon standards of human rights to be realised in domestic responses, and genuine recognition and incorporation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of People with Disability to be embedded in responses to distress.

• The majority of participants did not want police attending. Some said police attendance would be appropriate only if they had substantial training in mental health presentations, recognising and responding to trauma, de-escalation skills and how to provide calm humanising responses.

• Some characterised police responses as only appropriate if it were part of a co-response, where the mental health clinician took the lead.