'They are ready for the holiday season – the season during which, unfortunately, we see an increase in mental health calls every year.'
The Saskatchewan RCMP will permanently hire registered psychiatric nurses to help speak to people in crisis and better assess the needs of people calling 911.
The psychiatric nurses provide intervention, assessment, support, recommendations and referrals to callers in Saskatchewan experiencing a mental health or addiction crisis.
Stationed at the Operational Communication Centre (OCC) in Regina, the nurses assist frontline officers in dealing with calls and emergencies. Any RCMP officer responding to a call in which they believe the caller or person involves is dealing a mental health or addiction crisis, they can call on one of the nurses to help. At that point the nurse will speak with the officer before speaking directly with the person in crisis. From there the team of an officer or officers and the nurse will take the next appropriate steps to try and get the person help.
Over those 12 months the RCMP gathered some data on how the program was received. According to a press release 99.8 per cent of callers reporting a mental health crisis agreed to speak with the nurse, 80 per cent of the callers assessed “immediately received referrals to be admitted to a mental health and/or addiction service,” and 71 per cent “of the callers assessed by a nurse avoided being driven by a police officer to an Emergency Department to get a diagnosis and/or treatment.”
In total there are now four nurses in Saskatchewan working as part of this program.
As part of a press release announcing the program becoming permanent were two quotes from people who used the service. One read: “This is the best thing that has ever happened to me. Thank you for being able to talk to me and get me help.”
The other said, “I was treated like a person. To have someone there at the lowest point in my life really made a difference in how I got through the crisis and how I feel about the RCMP. Police officers haven’t always been my best friends, but I understand now they are there to support me and offer me assistance.”
This program can help to divert people away from holding cells or emergency room waiting areas while getting people into programming that might otherwise be difficult to access.
But the program does not operate 24/7. According to the RCMP it runs “Monday to Thursday from noon to midnight as well as Friday, Saturday and Sunday 24 hours a day.”
Jocelyn James, manager of the Saskatchewan RCMP OCC, said the RCMP is very happy to the program extended and that it comes at a timely mment given the increased calls the RCMP and other police see around the
“They are ready for the holiday season — the season during which, unfortunately, we see an increase in mental health calls every year,” said James.
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