The effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health calls for police service.

IF 3.1 Q1 CRIMINOLOGY & PENOLOGY

Crime Science Pub Date : 2021-01-01 Epub Date: 2021-10-11 DOI:10.1186/s40163-021-00157-6

Jacek Koziarski

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Drawing upon seven years of police calls for service data (2014-2020), this study examined the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on calls involving persons with perceived mental illness (PwPMI) using a Bayesian Structural Time Series. The findings revealed that PwPMI calls did not increase immediately after the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020. Instead, a sustained increase in PwPMI calls was identified in August 2020 that later became statistically significant in October 2020. Ultimately, the analysis revealed a 22% increase in PwPMI calls during the COVID-19 pandemic than would have been expected had the pandemic not taken place. The delayed effect of the pandemic on such calls points to a need for policymakers to prioritize widely accessible mental health care that can be deployed early during public health emergencies thus potentially mitigating or eliminating the need for increased police intervention, as was the case here.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40163-021-00157-6.

查看原文本刊更多论文

COVID-19 大流行对心理健康报警服务的影响。

本研究利用七年的报警服务数据（2014-2020 年），采用贝叶斯结构时间序列法研究了 COVID-19 大流行对涉及可感知精神病患者（PwPMI）的报警的影响。研究结果表明，在 2020 年 3 月大流行开始后，PwPMI 电话并没有立即增加。相反，在 2020 年 8 月发现 PwPMI 电话持续增加，后来在 2020 年 10 月变得具有统计意义。最终，分析表明，在 COVID-19 大流行期间，PwPMI 来电比未发生大流行时预计的增加了 22%。大流行对此类呼叫的延迟影响表明，政策制定者有必要优先考虑可广泛获取的心理保健服务，这些服务可在公共卫生突发事件期间及早部署，从而有可能减轻或消除增加警方干预的需要，这里的情况就是如此：在线版本包含补充材料，可查阅 10.1186/s40163-021-00157-6。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Crime Science Social Sciences-Cultural Studies

CiteScore

11.90

自引率

8.20%

发文量

审稿时长

13 weeks

期刊介绍： Crime Science is an international, interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal with an applied focus. The journal''s main focus is on research articles and systematic reviews that reflect the growing cooperation among a variety of fields, including environmental criminology, economics, engineering, geography, public health, psychology, statistics and urban planning, on improving the detection, prevention and understanding of crime and disorder. Crime Science will publish theoretical articles that are relevant to the field, for example, approaches that integrate theories from different disciplines. The goal of the journal is to broaden the scientific base for the understanding, analysis and control of crime and disorder. It is aimed at researchers, practitioners and policy-makers with an interest in crime reduction. It will also publish short contributions on timely topics including crime patterns, technological advances for detection and prevention, and analytical techniques, and on the crime reduction applications of research from a wide range of fields. Crime Science publishes research articles, systematic reviews, short contributions and theoretical articles. While Crime Science uses the APA reference style, the journal welcomes submissions using alternative reference styles on a case-by-case basis.