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

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...

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Autor principal: Koziarski, Jacek
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8503731/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34660172
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40163-021-00157-6
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author Koziarski, Jacek
author_facet Koziarski, Jacek
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description 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.
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spelling pubmed-85037312021-10-12 The effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health calls for police service Koziarski, Jacek Crime Sci Short Contribution 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. Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2021-10-11 2021 /pmc/articles/PMC8503731/ /pubmed/34660172 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40163-021-00157-6 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Short Contribution
Koziarski, Jacek
The effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health calls for police service
title The effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health calls for police service
title_full The effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health calls for police service
title_fullStr The effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health calls for police service
title_full_unstemmed The effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health calls for police service
title_short The effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health calls for police service
title_sort effect of the covid-19 pandemic on mental health calls for police service
topic Short Contribution
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8503731/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34660172
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40163-021-00157-6
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