logo
    • Magazine
    • Membership
    • Donate
  • Racial Justice
  • Economic Justice
    • Collections
  • Climate Justice
  • Health Justice
  • Leadership
  • CONTENT TYPES
  • Subscribe
  • Webinars
    • Upcoming Webinars
    • Complimentary Webinars
    • Premium On-Demand Webinars
  • Membership
  • Submissions

Mental Health Service Cuts Strain Police Nationally

Ruth McCambridge
December 6, 2010
Share
Tweet
Share
Email
Print

December 5, 2010; Source: New York Times | As community-based treatment and hospital beds for people with serious mental illness are cut in state budgets, police across the country are being called more often to deal with the results. NPQ has been following these issues for a while. See here and here. And find a report detailing mental health in prisons in Texas here [PDF].

The New York Times reports that a sharply increasing proportion of the population in prisons and jails are diagnosed with serious mental illness. What’s more notes the Times, is that when services become less available, police are more often the first line of intervention. This results in additional calls to police departments already often struggling with their own budget cuts. The extra work diverts them from other duties and can result in highly charged and sometimes-dangerous arrest scenes when untreated people have hit a crisis point.

While many police departments are gearing up for handling these calls more effectively through the development of crisis intervention teams, the system has little capacity after an initial arrest to manage escalating situations. The article cites a situation in which a police officer was forced to dangle off the Casco Bay Bridge in Portland, Ore. to prevent a woman’s suicide. She was released from the hospital a few hours later and went back to try again.

Sign up for our free newsletters

Subscribe to NPQ's newsletters to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

By signing up, you agree to our privacy policy and terms of use, and to receive messages from NPQ and our partners.

Others in this article cite the same type of problem. The National Alliance on Mental Illness has developed a national crisis intervention team. “A lot of people view calling the police as the only way to get loved ones any kind of treatment, because when the police come they have to do something,” said Laura Usher, the intervention team’s coordinator. “But unfortunately that doesn’t necessarily always lead to appropriate treatment . . . States across the country are cutting their mental health budgets, and people who are serviced by state mental health programs are the poorest, and they’re unable to get services any other way.” The community mental health system is broken, she concluded.

Cuts to appropriate mental health treatment are fiscally and morally a terrible choice. This article makes clear that state cuts in this area—already occurring pre-recession in some cases—are only getting worse.—Ruth McCambridge

Share
Tweet
Share
Email
Print
About the author
Ruth McCambridge

Ruth is Editor Emerita of the Nonprofit Quarterly. Her background includes forty-five years of experience in nonprofits, primarily in organizations that mix grassroots community work with policy change. Beginning in the mid-1980s, Ruth spent a decade at the Boston Foundation, developing and implementing capacity building programs and advocating for grantmaking attention to constituent involvement.

More about: Human ServicesMental HealthNonprofit News

Become a member

Support independent journalism and knowledge creation for civil society. Become a member of Nonprofit Quarterly.

Members receive unlimited access to our archived and upcoming digital content. NPQ is the leading journal in the nonprofit sector written by social change experts. Gain access to our exclusive library of online courses led by thought leaders and educators providing contextualized information to help nonprofit practitioners make sense of changing conditions and improve infra-structure in their organizations.

Join Today
logo logo logo logo logo
See comments

Spring-2023-sidebar-subscribe
You might also like
COVID-19 Exposes Mental Health Coverage Gap in Both US and Canada
Chris Cannito
COVID-19 and the Brain: A Pattern of Neurological Damage Emerges
Carrie Collins-Fadell
A Whole-Body Chart on Nonprofit Revenue Trends
Ruth McCambridge
Nonprofits Combat COVID Stress One Breath, One Community at a Time
Nicole Zerillo
Winter Resiliency: Fostering Mental Health in Times of Crisis
Tessa Crisman
Beleaguered NYC Human Services Groups Will Hold Future Candidates to Task
Marian Conway

NPQ Webinars

April 27th, 2 pm ET

Liberatory Decision-Making

How to Facilitate and Engage in Healthy Decision-making Processes

Register Now
You might also like
AOC’s “Tax the Rich” Dress Dazzles Met Gala, while...
Anastasia Reesa Tomkin
Foundation Giving Numbers for 2020 Show 15 Percent Increase
Steve Dubb
Strike MoMA Imagines Art Museums without Billionaires
Tessa Crisman

Like what you see?

Subscribe to the NPQ newsletter to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

See our newsletters

By signing up, you agree to our privacy policy and terms of use, and to receive messages from NPQ and our partners.

NPQ-Spring-2023-cover

Independent & in your mailbox.

Subscribe today and get a full year of NPQ for just $59.

subscribe
  • About
  • Contact
  • Advertise
  • Copyright
  • Careers

We are using cookies to give you the best experience on our website.

 

Non Profit News | Nonprofit Quarterly
Powered by  GDPR Cookie Compliance
Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.

Strictly Necessary Cookies

Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.

If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.