Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Anthony O'Brien: Associate Professor in Mental Health Nursing at University of Waikato on Police dialling back on mental health callouts

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Anthony O'Brien: Associate Professor in Mental Health Nursing at University of Waikato on Police dialling back on mental health callouts · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

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  Speaker 1: From today, police are dialing back the number of mental
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  Speaker 1: health callouts that they will attend. Phase one of the
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  Speaker 1: reduced services will see police complete faster handovers in the
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  Speaker 1: emergency department, transport requests and attendance at mental health facilities
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  Speaker 1: will need to meet a higher threshold. This is happening
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  Speaker 1: from today. All four phases set to be implemented by
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  Speaker 1: September next year. Anthony O'Brien is the Associate professor in
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  Speaker 1: Mental health Nursing at the University of Wykoto. He's with
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  Speaker 1: US Live this morning.
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  Speaker 2: Good morning, Good morning, Ryan Cura, Thank.
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  Speaker 1: You for being with me. What can you just tell
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  Speaker 1: me practically, if someone is having a mental health crisis today,
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  Speaker 1: what will change?
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  Speaker 2: Well, that will depend on the type of mental health
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  Speaker 2: crisis they're having. Ryan, That's a term that covers a
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  Speaker 2: broad range of experiences that people might have. Sometimes the
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  Speaker 2: mental health crisis that necessitate the involvement of police to
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  Speaker 2: safety reasons. Other times the mental health crisis that can
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  Speaker 2: be managed by primary mental health services or primary health services,
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  Speaker 2: or by mental health space services. And that's where most
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  Speaker 2: mental health crises are managed. They're not actually managed by police.
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  Speaker 2: So for some people there be no change. I guess
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  Speaker 2: where there'll be a change will be if it's a
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  Speaker 2: situation where police feel that their presence is not necessary,
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  Speaker 2: they'll want to negotiate that if they're asked to attend.
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  Speaker 1: Right, does the hospital have a team of psychologists or
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  Speaker 1: specialists that could go attend an event outside of the
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  Speaker 1: hospital or are they based there and don't move?
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  Speaker 2: So the mental health services are predominantly community based, so
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  Speaker 2: they are mobile, they're not based in the hospital, they're
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  Speaker 2: based in community clinics. That's right throughout the country. That's
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  Speaker 2: been the case for the best part of thirty years now.
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  Speaker 1: But is that for emergency responses?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, sure, that's for emergency responses here.
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  Speaker 1: So why have the police been doing it then?
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  Speaker 2: So once again you have to think about mental health
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  Speaker 2: events being a broad range of different time types of events,
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  Speaker 2: and some do require the presence of a mental health service.
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  Speaker 2: Some don't, and it's the one and the presence of police,
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  Speaker 2: and some don't. The majority don't, the vast majority. So
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  Speaker 2: the ones that police and mental health services respond to together,
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  Speaker 2: or that mental health ask for a police presence, they
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  Speaker 2: are the ones where as I understand it, there is
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  Speaker 2: no there's no commitment to say we're not going to
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  Speaker 2: do that anymore. It's the ones where police feel their
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  Speaker 2: presence is not necessary, where in the past they have
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  Speaker 2: attended feeling that they may be able to offer some
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  Speaker 2: help support. They're the ones that they're not going to
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  Speaker 2: be attending.
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  Speaker 1: Is the sky going to fall in? Today? Is something
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  Speaker 1: terrible going to happen? Do you think because of this change?
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  Speaker 2: I don't think the sky is are going to fall in.
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  Speaker 2: I know that health and police have been negotiating about
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  Speaker 2: better managing police resource responding to people with mental health
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  Speaker 2: crisis in the community for some time. This has been
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  Speaker 2: going on for a number of years, so it's not new.
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  Speaker 2: There is a memorandum of understanding between police and mental
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  Speaker 2: health that is still in place, or police and health
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  Speaker 2: that's still in place, so any changes will need to
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  Speaker 2: be kind of negotiated through that memorandum of understanding. And
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  Speaker 2: as I understand it, those discussions are happening between police
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  Speaker 2: and health. So everybody's doing everything they can to kind
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  Speaker 2: of manage this change. And I think health and health
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  Speaker 2: we recognize that there's a lot of calls on police
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  Speaker 2: time and we don't want police to be unnecessarily involved.
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  Speaker 1: Well, yeah, I think most people think they've probably got
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  Speaker 1: much better things to be doing in some of those cases. Anthony,
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  Speaker 1: thank you very much for your time. Anthony O'Brian, Associate
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  Speaker 1: Professor of Mental Health Nursing, University of Whitekatzo. For more
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  Speaker 1: from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge, listen live to News
• 3:45
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