Interactions with police decreased for people with complex mental-health challenges in a program where they received regular visits from a team made up of health professionals and police officers, according to a new study by University of Victoria researchers.
UVic psychology professors Erica Woodin and Catherine Costigan analyzed data from Victoria police on interactions between officers and clients of Victoria’s Assertive Community Treatment teams and compared the frequency of police interactions before and after people were admitted to the ACT program.
Woodin and Costigan found that the monthly rate of interactions with police decreased after clients entered the ACT program, which accepts people who have a diagnosed psychotic illness or mood disorder with psychotic symptoms, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
The teams include a range of health professionals who connect with clients through outreach and home visits, often over several years.
The inclusion of police on an ACT team is unusual, and the researchers sought to understand the impact of Victoria’s model, which has included officers since 2007, Woodin said at Victoria police headquarters on Tuesday.
Woodin said police integration on the mental-health teams seems to promote safety for clients as well as staff and the larger community.
She said the key reason is that ACT officers “get to know the clients and are able to adjust their responses based on what they know about what’s in the best interest of clients’ well-being more than unknown patrol officers can.”
The researchers’ data analysis of interactions between 448 ACT clients and police showed that only interactions related to mental health, such as wellness checks, increased, and that interactions with ACT officers are less likely to result in a client becoming involved in the criminal justice system.
“So some of it could be that police are interpreting the behaviour through a mental-health lens instead of through a criminal lens, even if the behavior might be similar in some way,” Woodin said.
An agreement between Island Health and VicPD allows the ACT team to share information about a person’s history with ACT officers that generally wouldn’t be shared with a patrol officer in an urgent situation, said Echo Kulpas, Island Health’s manager of the mental health services unit.
“That makes a difference in what we know to be true of the drivers behind a behaviour,” she said.
VicPD has two active ACT officers, and a third on maternity leave, who are embedded on five teams of psychiatrists, nurses, social workers and people with lived and living experience.
Chief Del Manak said ACT teams allow officers to step back as soon as possible and let mental-health professionals take the lead when safe.
“It’s all about building trust and having trusting relationships with the individuals that we’re trying to serve,” he said.
Those relationships are built in “regular, everyday interactions, not just in crisis situations,” because ACT staff and officers work with people for long periods, said Costigan.
In previous studies that included interviewing ACT clients, the researchers heard from a young woman that an ACT officer helped her get a restraining order against a former partner, Costigan said.
“In interview after interview, we’d see all these different roles that the police officers played.”
VicPD will review the research findings to determine what is currently working and what the department can improve, Manak said.
