Mental Health Related Incidents (1539A/21)
Request
Following FOI REFERENCE 660A 01/09/2020 AND FOI REFERENCE 820A 15/10/2020 Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 I would like to request the following data by quarter or monthly for the period of the start of the calendar year 2015 to the 3rd quarter of 2021 (1st January 2015- 30th September 2021) broken down by quarter or monthly.
- Police incidents involving mental health
- How many calls has your police force received where mental health was flagged and/or cited as a factor (broken down by quarter or monthly as specified above).
- National Police Chiefs’ Council say 2019 was a historic high for police mental health incidents but that national figures show the period of 7th May 2020 to 4th September 2020 was even higher.
- Have parts of the Pandemic period to date seen your highest number of police mental health incidents on record?
- If it has been a record which was the quarter or months in which that record high occurred?
- Have parts of the Pandemic period to date seen your highest number of calls to your police force where mental health was flagged and/or cited as a factor on record?
- If it has been a record which was the quarter or months in which that record high occurred.
Response
Please find attached our response.
Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from a number of data sources used by forces for police purposes. The detail collected to respond specifically to your request is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large scale recording system. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when interpreting those data.
The figures provided therefore are our best interpretation of relevance of data to your request, but you should be aware that the collation of figures for ad hoc requests may have limitations and this should be taken into account when those data are used.
If you decide to write an article / use the enclosed data we would ask you to take into consideration the factors highlighted in this document so as to not mislead members of the public or official bodies, or misrepresent the relevance of the whole or any part of this disclosed material.