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Lived Experience

Police-Mental Health Collaboration (PMHC) Toolkit

Lived Experience

Police-Mental Health Collaboration (PMHC) strategies offer behavioral health care providers, at the state and local levels the opportunity to improve the coordination of services with their law enforcement partners. This coordination can lead to improved public health outcomes for people with behavioral health care needs who come into contact with law enforcement.

This section gives an overview of the role of behavioral health providers when treating and delivering services to people with behavioral health care needs who come in contact with law enforcement. It discusses the importance of behavioral health leadership and collaboration to the implementation and sustainability of an effective PMHC strategy and demonstrates the value a PMHC offers to behavioral health care providers. Additionally, the behavioral health section highlights important collaborative activities—such as information sharing, training, and performance measurement—that can positively impact the treatment and daily outcomes of people with behavioral health needs.


Value of Lived Experience

Many people who have behavioral health care needs, particularly those who also have co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders, may come into contact with law enforcement during moments of crisis. However, when behavioral health care providers at the state and locals levels partner with law enforcement to use effective PMHC strategies, they have an opportunity to support sustained wellness for people with behavioral health care needs. When these PMHCs are implemented and sustained, behavioral health care providers can expect to see the following positive outcomes:

Partnerships with law enforcement offer behavioral health care providers the opportunity to develop and facilitate cross-training both for officers—which can increase law enforcement understanding of practical approaches and strategies to improve encounters involving people with behavioral health care needs—and for behavioral health care providers, who may need more understanding of police practices.

Through partnership, planning, and cross-training, behavioral health care providers can assist in the development of law enforcement policies and procedures so they align with clinical best practices and promote treatment and services over arrest when appropriate.

Trained law enforcement officers, by themselves or working side-by-side with behavioral health care providers, are able to identify and effectively engage people with behavioral health care needs through the use of de-escalation techniques that reduce the number and volatility of encounters. When officers respond to crisis situations, they are then equipped with the skills to approach each encounter effectively, and when appropriate, divert the individual from jail and into more appropriate behavioral health care services.

Law enforcement officers can support and collaborate with behavioral health care treatment teams that contribute to the individual’s ongoing connection to the recovery process by participating in treatment planning, Officers can help to reduce crisis episodes through proactive coordination with case management with the person’s consent or authorization.

Fewer incidents of crisis, incarceration, and involuntary psychiatric commitment result in less disruption to both the treatment and community integration plans. If the individual is arrested, the established partnership between law enforcement and behavioral health care providers can increase the likelihood that he or she will receive appropriate treatment while in custody and will be quickly connected to community-based services upon release.


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Lived Experience: Leadership and Collaboration

An effective PMHC requires continuous leadership support to ensure that core agreements amongst partners at the state and local level are implemented. Agreements form processes that are routinely reviewed so that they remain responsive to shifting jurisdictional needs.

Leadership:

Strong support from the behavioral health care agency executive and management staff is essential to a successful PMHC. This support requires a continuous recognition from the director and executive-level staff that the collaboration is an agency priority and is critical to the agency’s mission. When successful, leadership assigns qualified personnel and resources to the PMHC including a designated manager to oversee the operations and serve as the liaison between behavioral health care services, and law enforcement. Champions from the board of directors may also further reinforce these efforts by advocating for the agency’s ongoing commitment to the PMHC and influencing how resources and funds are allocated.

Collaboration:

Successful PMHC strategies require coordination with law enforcement agencies at the executive and program manager levels. This coordination can take multiple forms such as establishing mutual goals and objectives and defining personnel roles and responsibilities. PMHCs can help behavioral health, , and law enforcement partners reach an accord on how to implement policies consistently across organizations and promote safe on-scene responses, referrals and diversion, information sharing, training, and other aspects of the partnership. These topics and related procedures can also be memorialized through interagency agreements.

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Focused Tools for Law Enforcement

Many communities struggle with the PMHC program design process. Communities are unsure how to design and develop a PMHC program that meets their distinct needs and challenges. One way to increase knowledge of PMHCs, is to review programs that other jurisdictions have developed and tailor those programs to your specific community needs.

Law Enforcement agencies interested in expanding their knowledge base, starting, or enhancing a PMHC, can contact The U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) or BJA’s Training and Technical Assistance (TTA) Provider. BJA supports these urban and rural police departments to act as host-sites to visiting law enforcement agencies and their mental health partners.

Located across the country, these learning sites represent a diverse cross-section of perspectives and program examples and are dedicated to helping other jurisdictions improve their responses to people with mental illnesses.

Opportunities

The ten learning sites host site visits from interested colleagues and other local and state government officials, answer questions from the field, and work with BJA’s TTA provider to develop materials for practitioners and their community partners.

TTA is provided to law enforcement agencies and their community partners in an effort to assist with the development or implementation of PMHC strategies. Supplemental funds can be made available to agencies that are interested in visiting the learning sites. This is a focused approach intended to provide your agency with access to outstanding peer resources for police-mental health collaboration programs.

To request TTA and receive confirmation within 36 hours of your request

For frequently asked questions about the Law Enforcement Mental Health Learning Sites, access the TA FAQs.

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Law Enforcement Learning Sites

Support jurisdictions in exploring strategies to improve the outcomes of encounters between law enforcement and people who have mental illnesses.

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Please submit questions, policies and training materials that can benefit others for review and consideration.

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