Summary
OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this study was to examine the lived experiences offrontline police personnel of a mid-sized police service in Southern Ontario. As the prevalence of mental illness increases, so do the calls for assistance to policeservices. Police officers often find themselves on the frontline and are often the firstresponders to mental health calls when an individual is in crisis (Wells & Schafer,2006). With the majority of current research being quantitative in nature, thisqualitative study allowed the voice of frontline police personnel to be heard in orderto provide a complete picture of police response to mental health calls for service.Furthermore, this study included communications personnel, which are animportant group that has often been overlooked in previous studies, but areinstrumental in police response to all calls for service. METHODS: The livedexperiences of fourteen participants were examined using in-depth, semi-structuredinterviews with heuristic phenomenology as a guiding theoretical orientation. Theparticipants were placed into one of three groups based on his/her current rolewithin the police service with the total number of participants within the groups asfollows: police officers (n = 7), administrators (n = 3) and communicators (n = 4).Four research questions were examined through fifteen interview questions.RESULTS: Upon detailed analysis of the interviews, several themes and subthemesemerged from the data across all groups of participants. Each theme was found toplay an important role in in responding to mental health calls. The themes included:(1) Interaction of roles on mental health calls; (2) Challenges relating to mentalhealth calls; (3) Strategies for responding to mental health calls; and (4) Coping andvaftermath. Four subthemes emerged relating to challenges when responding tomental health calls: (i) Perceived increase in mental health calls for service; (ii) Lackof training; (iii) Type of training; (iv) The broken system. CONCLUSIONS: Officers and communicators often find themselves as the first responders to individuals suffering from a mental illness who are in crisis. Hopefully this study has created anincreased awareness of the role that frontline police personnel play when responding to mental health calls for service, some of the challenges that they face,and their voices will continue to be heard as policy makers and stakeholders makeimprovements and adjustments to the current system in the future.