Police forces are experiencing an unprecedented surge in mental health-related calls, according to statistics HuffPost reviewed from eight services and all 13 RCMP divisions.
The RCMP is the country’s largest police force and it reported a substantial increase in mental health-related calls in every province and territory, including in Ontario and Quebec where it doesn’t do front-line contract policing, but has a federal policing mandate in the capital region of Ottawa and Gatineau, Que.
A patchwork of training, funding and partnerships with mental health agencies has resulted in some successes — such as in Hamilton, where its crisis intervention team assisted in close to half of mental health-related calls last year and is considered one of Canada’s best models for police crisis support.
For the most part, however, many communities are ill-equipped to help people in crisis without the use of force. Not all services have crisis intervention teams, and even where they do exist, the vast majority are not staffed 24 hours a day, and therefore cannot respond to all mental health-related calls determined to be non-violent.
Source: Police Crisis Teams In Short Supply As Mental Health Calls Multiply In Canada | HuffPost Canada
