People in mental health crisis are still being criminalised owing to NHS failures, says report

A “culture of blame shifting and unaccountability” in the NHS has led to the service continuing to use systems that criminalise people in distress during mental health crises, a report by the charity Medact has warned.After pressure from the campaigning group the StopSIM Coalition, NHS England said in 2023 it would stop using the Serenity Integrated Mentoring (SIM) system and similar practices that embed police forces in mental health systems to oversee patients who arrive at hospitals during mental health crises. NHS England promised to “eradicate” police involvement in non-emergency mental healthcare, withholding care, and discriminatory attitudes towards patients who harm themselves.1But Medact’s report found that police remain embedded in mental health clinical teams at NHS trusts.2 Patients who were interviewed for the report said that they were still experiencing the effects of “aggressive” and “threatening” police behaviour when they were at their most vulnerable.The report documents the findings from…
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