What is it about?
Globally, 13.7% of psychiatric emergency patients are brought in by police, a rate that seems to be higher in the United States (22.8%). Such patients often are male, display aggressive behavior, are homeless and have diagnoses of substance use or psychotic disorders. These characteristics are similar to those of incarcerated psychiatric patients.
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Why is it important?
Our findings suggest that interventions to reduce homelessness among psychiatric patients and other preventive and therapeutic approaches on substance use and psychotic disorders might be useful to reduce police interventions for psychiatric patients and may help to reduce police referrals. These interventions might even help reduce the risk for incarceration of psychiatric patients.
Perspectives
During my night shifts as a psychiatric resident, police-referred patients were often a particular challenge for me and the police. For the patient, it was sometimes even traumatic. The idea for this article was fed by my curiosity about what we already know about this group of patients. It was important to me to discuss also strategies of prevention.
Thomas Goldschmidt
AmsterdamUMC
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Referral of Patients to Psychiatric Emergency Departments by Police: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis, Psychiatric Services, March 2025, American Psychiatric Association,
DOI: 10.1176/appi.ps.20240323.
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