'Far more' mental health calls in Waterloo region than police-CMHA partnership can handle

It was a busy spring for the Integrated Mobile Police and Crisis Team (IMPACT) in Waterloo region a partnership that sends clinicians to help police officers with mental health calls.

Between April 1 and June 30 this year, IMPACT was dispatched 364 times, which marks an increase of 42 per cent compared to the first quarter of the year.

It's also a 746 per cent increase relative to the same period in 2020, which coincided with the provincial COVID-19 shutdown, according to a report that went before the Waterloo Regional Police Services Board Wednesday.

While police say the program has latelybeen available for more mental health calls than it has in the past, the demand for the service still outpaces its supply.

"There are far more calls than we're able to respond to," said Jeff Stanlick, director of services for the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA) Waterloo Wellington, which runs IMPACT in partnership with police.

Throughout the pandemic, Stanlick said IMPACT staffers have seen people's mental health needs becoming more complicated.

"Some of the toppresentations this year includerelationship conflict, alcohol, substance abuse, anxiety, depression and agitation," he said."Where we may have seen a presentation with one or two concerns, we're beginning to see them with more."

According to the board report, IMPACT attendedroughly 13 per cent of calls to police about a suicide attempt this spring, and 16 per cent of calls to police about a person who was mentally ill. That's an increase relative to both the first quarter of 2021 and to the same period of time last year, the report said.

24/7 program would cost $2.4 million

About 13 per cent of the time this spring, when police called IMPACT for help, the team simply wasn't available, the board report said.

Currently, the program has 11 staff who are available from 8 a.m. to midnight. To bring the program 24/7, Stanlick said CMHA would need to hire an additional 22 staff, which would cost about $2.4 million a year.

In an ideal situation, Stanlick said CMHA would get more funding for IMPACT plus money to fund the counselling and services needed to help people in the wake of a mental health crisis, and to keep them from getting to a crisis point in the first place.

Call diversion, legislative changes needed: Larkin

As for police Chief Bryan Larkin, he told the board the IMPACT program got a funding bump of $250,000 for 2021, and he hopes more funding will again be available next year through the Ministry of the Solicitor General.

Still, he said a better emergency response to mental health calls won't come from funding alone.

Larkin has said previously that police aren't necessarily the best equipped to respond to mental health calls, but have become a default because they're available 24/7 and have powers under the Mental Health Act to apprehend people in crisis.

On Wednesday, he said the service is interested in piloting a new system of triaging mental health crisis calls directly toward the healthcare system, so police don't necessarily need to be involved at all.

Larkin is also calling forlegislative changesthat would give other agencies, such as paramedics, the same powers that police now do to apprehend people in crisis if necessary and take them to hospital.

"I don't necessarily always see this as pushing more funding into the system, it's how do we use the funding in the system to be the most efficient, effective, and quite frankly best for the individual that requires the healthcare need," said Larkin.