"We save suicidal people, drive them to the psychiatric clinic, which doesn't receive them. And then we get alarms about completed suicides. Several cases just this year in my municipality."
The words come from a police officer in a Novus survey commissioned by the union, where only seven percent believe that the collaboration between the police and psychiatry works well. 58 percent think it is very or fairly poor.
"Collaboration with psychiatry is virtually non-existent in my local police district," writes another police officer.
A third tells how people with "obvious psychoses" can be driven to the emergency room several times a week. "They are back home in their residence before we have time to report the incident," writes the police officer.
Great frustration
Union chairman Katharina von Sydow notes a great frustration among police officers, who repeatedly encounter people in need of care and who do not receive the help they need.
Those who work in psychiatric care and social services do fantastic work, but they do not have the conditions to ensure that it works fully.
The union is calling for greater investments and more resources for psychiatry.
Politicians need to focus on this area as well, says Katharina von Sydow.
For the police, a well-functioning psychiatry is both about ensuring that those who need care receive it, but also about the crime prevention perspective, says von Sydow.
She mentions several cases in the past year where sick individuals have committed serious crimes.
Solutions exist
In Jönköping, we had a mentally ill person who attacked my colleagues, where one colleague was close to death. We had a son who took his mother's life. We have the case at Ica Maxi. This is a social problem, says she.
Collaboration between the police and psychiatry is not always deficient, she emphasizes. For example, in Stockholm, there is the successful concept of psychiatric ambulances that respond with specially trained nurses on emergency calls. That type of solution should be spread to more parts of the country, believes Katharina von Sydow.
Novus has, on behalf of the Police Union, conducted a survey on a range of issues, including how collaboration works between the police and psychiatry, school, social services, and municipality.
Collaboration with psychiatry works clearly worst, according to the survey. Only 7 percent believe it is "fairly good". At the same time, around 25-35 percent of police officers believe that collaboration works "well" or "very well" with school, social services, and municipality.
1,602 responses have been submitted in the survey, with a response rate of 42 percent. The results are representative of the union's members as a whole, according to Novus.
Source: The Police Union
