Co‐responding police–mental health programmes: Service user experiences and outcomes in a large urban centre

As police officers are often the first responders to mental health crises, a number of approaches have emerged to support skilled police crisis responses. One such approach is the police–mental health co‐responding team model, whereby mental health nurses and police officers jointly respond to mental health crises in the community. In the present mixed‐method study, we evaluated outcomes of co‐responding team interactions at a large Canadian urban centre by analysing administrative data for 2743 such interactions, and where comparison data were available, compared them to 16 226 police‐only team responses. To understand service user experiences, we recruited 15 service users for in‐depth qualitative interviews, and completed inductive thematic analysis. Co‐responding team interactions had low rates of injury and arrest, and compared to police‐only teams, co‐responding teams had higher overall rates of escorts to hospital, but lower rates of involuntary escorts. Co‐responding teams also spent less time on hospital handovers than police‐only teams. Service users valued responders with mental health knowledge and verbal de‐escalation skills, as well as a compassionate, empowering, and non‐criminalizing approach. Current findings suggest that co‐responding teams could be a useful component of existing crisis‐response systems.