Crisis response teams achieve 70% reduction in people taken into custody under Mental Health Act

Const. Scott Woods and mental health worker Sarah Burtenshaw check in on an elderly woman who believes neighbours are spraying a substance into her apartment. This is not the first time she's called 911. 

Woods and Burtenshaw are members of Hamilton's mobile crisis rapid response team. The program pairs a police officer with a mental health worker to answer 911 calls involving people in mental health crises. 

In the eight years since the program launched in Hamilton, there has been a marked reduction in taking people in mental health crisis into custody.

Before the mobile team, Hamilton police apprehended three out of every four people they were called to assist. Their latest figures show a 70 per cent reduction to fewer than one in five.

"You'll see a full range. It might be as horrible as somebody up on a bridge threatening to jump," Burtenshaw told Dr. Brian Goldman, host of White Coat Black Art.

"It might be somebody saying, 'Listen, I'm really worried about my mom. She's not answering the door. Can you do a wellness check?'"

On this call, Burtenshaw talks politely to the elderly client, asking her if she can have a look at her pill pack to make sure she is taking all her medication each day. 

Woods looks around her modest living room apartment and remembers that he had been there a few years ago and helped her fix her television. They share a laugh with the woman at the memory.

The pair leave after making sure that the woman is safe and reassuring her that there is no danger. They make followup plans and leave their card beside her landline phone.

It's a low-stakes call, but it shows the approach of the team. When it launched in 2013, the Hamilton unit was the first of its kind in Ontario. Over the past five years, it's expanded to three units on daily staggered shifts, responding to an average of almost 2,700 people in crisis annually.

Now most municipalities in Canada have similar programs. Close to 90 per cent of Ontario Provincial Police detachments have mobile crisis teams.

Jeff Stanlick, director of services at the Canadian Mental Health Association Waterloo Wellington, oversees a similar program in Guelph. He said that it has reduced intrusive apprehensions and unnecessary emergency department visits. From April to November of this year, the program responded to 1,859 live calls, 76.7 per cent of which were diverted from hospital.

Lisa Longworth, the provincial mental health lead with the Ontario Provincial Police, noted that mental health rapid response teams are particularly important during the holiday season and afterwards as winter sets in. 

"During the winter months, we can struggle with seasonal affective disorder and those long grey days in January and February," she said. "Added to that is the reality of COVID."