For months we have been reading about financial pressures facing the PSNI, but the letter from Northern Ireland’s Mental Health Champion is as stark as it is concerning.
In the letter, Professor Siobhan O’Neill warns that police cannot step away from their role of responding to mental health incidents until there is an adequate replacement service in place.
The implementation of a Right Care, Right Person (RCRP) policy has to be carefully considered, with a smooth transition needed when the PSNI withdraws.
Budgets are stretched and the Chief Constable has been vocal in calling for additional funding, which included the need to recruit hundreds of officers.
The PSNI rightly points out that officers should be responding to crime.
Workers properly trained in dealing with people experiencing a mental health crisis are best placed to de-escalate such fraught incidents, not armed police officers.
But Professor O’Neill has said that when this policy was adopted in England and Wales, it was progressed over several years.
Professor Siobhan O’Neill, Mental Health Champion for Northern Ireland
This comes down to the need to adequately fund mental health services.
But it is also about political choices, with governments, not just here, but around the world treating mental health with the seriousness it deserves.
That societal shift hasn’t occurred. The stigma around mental health persists, with people suffering from such conditions often made to feel as if they’re weak, rather than in need of help and support like someone with a physical disability.
That stigma, coupled with insufficient services, sadly means that many people never reach out for support, their health deteriorates and they reach a crisis point where they feel there is only one way out.
Good support services do exist and people should always reach out.
Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency figures show that of 203 suicides in 2022, the percentage from the most deprived areas (31%) was over three times that of the least deprived areas (9.4%).
That points to the fact that this is a cross-cutting issue affecting all Stormont departments.
Our government has to instil hope in the population. It has to lift deprived communities up through targeted investment; that’s not just health services, it is investment in housing, education, jobs and culture — all of this impacts mental health.
Whatever happens with the proposed RCRP policy, Stormont needs to start implementing the Mental Health Strategy — to build services capable of filling the void that will be left by the PSNI.