A Review of Quality Improvement [QI] Specialised Interventions in the USA and England to Reduce the Number of Police Mental Health Crisis Detentions and Provide Support to High Intensity Utilisers [HIUs]

Key issues in both the USA and England have been how to deal appropriately and effectively with the increasing number of mental health related incidents, in particular 1) the rising number of people with mental health issues detained in police custody until they can be clinically assessed and 2) the negative impact on public safety of the high intensity service users [HIUs] who draw a disproportionate amount of emergency and crisis services and are well known to both police and mental health services.

To provide an overview of what is known about current quality improvement interventions undertaken to address these two key issues i.e. reducing both the number of police mental health crisis detention and the disproportionate amount of emergency and crisis service usage [police, ambulance, ED] from HIUs with complex mental health problems to help inform policy and practice decisions in a context of lack of best evidence and lack of evidence based studies.

PubMed and Google Scholar were searched to undertake a narrative synthesis of what is known of the various quality improvement interventions that have been introduced in both the USA and England to address these two key issues. Authors’ knowledge was also used to describe two quality improvement interventions not included/not yet listed in Google Scholar or PubMed.

In the USA, the dominant approach to reduce mental health police detentions is the CIT model, first introduced in 1988, now increasingly implemented with the addition of the older model of police and mental health co-responder (which go back several decades earlier) to increase its effectiveness. The CIT model has been adopted and spread worldwide despite methodological shortcomings in evaluations. Although a best evidence model with increasing data being gathered on effectiveness, it has yet to become an evidence based model. The Street Triage models introduced in England in 2012 were inspired by the older police and mental health co-responder model. Despite a primarily descriptive approach and methodological shortcomings in evaluations and only a handful of studies published, ST has also been widely adopted and spread within England. Only a handful of interventions have focussed on supporting HIUs with the implementation in England of a unique model but evolving model of integrating a police officer within a multi-disciplinary mentoring style intervention which has now adopted by other English police forces and could usefully be adopted by USA police forces.

More data need to be systematically gathered on effectiveness and analysed against a range of clear success criteria, including a cost benefit analysis of the relative merits of their different variations before and in order that they can be called evidence-based models.