AIBU to think mental health crises should not be treated as antisocial behaviour

@Serencwtch what is your friend saying thy want to happen?
who has advised that they have a severe undiagnosed mental health problem?

The 4 suicide attempts - what did it involve? Same location?

I am guessing not in their bedroom but rather a public place involving lots of police, road closures, bystanders

If my child saw someone jumping off a bridge on to a passing car and was seriously traumatised - hell yes there is a victim

This is the most balanced post on this whole thread. I agree entirely and SOME people with mental health conditions would indeed be well served with proper consequences to encourage them to change their ways and coping strategies.

Yet their victims may end up with mental health issues because of the criminals in the first place, where do victims stand in all this?

Were all 4 attempts at the same location in public?

What did their 4 attempts at suicide involve? An overdose in their bedroom?
Or out in public, involving number police officers, passerbys trying to go about their business, children potentially walking up, travellers held up? That kind of thing

The person you use as an example doesn’t have a diagnosis.

So… would it be the case that someone could engage in anti social behaviour and then claim to have a mental health illness and be excused?

Well this is usually what CAMHS or other MH professionals call 'behavioural' then

Suicidal ideation and attempts are often behavioural, habitual behaviour to deal with an intensity of feelings which are being expressed that way as a maladaptive coping response, see also self harm.

That does seem a bit more global than the ones I have seen issued in our area which were more about being banned from going to particular locations like Mway bridges and railways which seemed proportionate to me. If the person in fact lives in supported accommodation then it seems more reasonable.

Theres a newish police policy called in true Orwellian fashion ‘Right Care Right Person’ that I thought had been rolled out nationally which limits police from responding to a lot of the stuff they previously did like welfare checks. Overall I tend to think it’s a good idea. Sometimes police responses to MH crisis have actually resulted in fatalities eg due to prone restraint. That says to me that the direction of travel is less criminalisation not more. Similarly places of safety no longer being police stations which they always were when I started a good few years ago.

In our area it would not be public vs private that determined police or ambulance it would be more about whether a crime had been committed and if not then a health ie ambulance response is more appropriate. MH services do not have any blue light crisis response so ambo is the closest you’ll get. Our area has some MH nurses deployed with police and ambulance but I don’t think that’s the case in all areas.

And this notification/order was issued after the 4th time the person had done this?

Should antisocial behaviour management measures be used in place of mental health support referrals. No.

Is it reasonable to say that they should never be used when there’s also a mental health component. Also no.

There will be some circumstances when there’s a potential for mutual benefit. Eg. Restricting access to a certain location.

I think it’s dreadful .Often people get to this state because of awful life experiences, then dire services and lack of treatment. This way of handling it means you chuck in the stigma of a record on top which makes the rest of life and recovery even harder .

Sorry yeah that's what I meant. Apologies if that wasn't clear. The second part of my post showed I found it unfair to criminalise them.

But they are not offered "more constructive options"!

The whole service operates in a fire-fighting way, only acting at crisis point then sending people off again once they're vaguely stable.

With issues based in trauma there's usually nothing on offer at all. People can't just rock up at the GP and ask to be referred for therapy (IAPT will not take complex or severe cases). They end up desperate and not thinking straight and these mad cries for help occur.

If we listened the first time they'd be a lot less likely to re-occurr.

The parallels may well be extraordinary - this sort of life experience isn't a one off. Could just as easily be describing my youth! Or that of others I know of (some of us recovered and some completed suicide).

Me? Better resources for mh services - more money, more staff, actual person centred care rather than lip service to the concept (see also involvement, participation, recovery ethos and whatever the latest fashionable terminology is).

The problem there is that lack of resources means the thresholds have changed. People generally have to be more severely ill now, a massive problem as obviously early intervention would be far better - and probably cheaper in the long term, but services are stuck in fire-fighting mode.