Co-Occuring Mental Disorders: A Case Study

Mental Illness has been prevalent all throughout our history from Isaac Newton to Abraham Lincoln to Sylvia Plath and so on. These illnesses can be as minor as a slight bipolar disorder or as severe as schizophrenia. In recent years, mental illnesses are becoming more prevalent in our criminal justice systems than anywhere else. Mental illness is becoming an association with crime and based on the information that has been found, this paper will attempt to further define the problem of mental illness within our criminal justice system and offer alternatives or insights as to how to possibly help with this problem.

Mental health and the criminal justice system have long been intertwined. Analyzing and understanding the links between these two subjects demands for a person to go in to depth in the fields of criminology, sociology, psychology, and psychiatry, because there are many points of view on whether or not a person’s criminal behavior is due to their mental health. Some believe that an unstable mental state of mind can highly influence a person’s decision of committing criminal actions. Others believe that mental health and crime are not related and that linking them together is a form of discrimination because it insinuates that those in our society that suffer from poor mental health are most likely to become a criminal due to their

Formal options (hospitalization and arrest) may be time consuming for the officer as well as not be in the best interest for the person that is mentally ill whereas, sometimes officers are sometimes left unable to resolve the matter informally because of the inexperience and unfamiliarity with de-escalation techniques. Law enforcement officers are trained to assess the situation and take the best course of action to resolve the issues, especially when dealing with the mental health community the goal is that the situation can be resolves peacefully. However, recent interactions between law enforcement agencies and mentally ill suspects have had some disappointing results (Teplin, 2000).

The use of force is without a doubt an important aspect in policing. The decision to utilize any type of force comes from a multitude of recourses; department policies, training, situational variables and ethical systems. There are three major categories in which an officers use of force is categorized under; justifiable, excessive and deadly; with a thin line between justifiable and excessive. Cases where excessive force has been used, has lead to injuries, deaths, civil damages, officers convicted and sentenced to jail and police chiefs and elected officials being removed from office (Fyfe, 1988). It is an officer`s discretion in determining when the use of force is justifiable.

The police officers are trained to observe, predict, and react. They maintain the order and reinforce the law in our society. It is estimated that as many as 10% of all police interactions involve persons with severe mental illness (SMI) and that of all incarcerated individuals, 14.5% males, and 31% females suffer

There are a few agencies in the Durham Region that require support workers to be knowledgeable and educated in both the mental health and addiction field Durham Mental Health and Cornerstone Association are just two agencies. Having an integrated level of care is a fundamental component of these programs that are working with clients with addiction and mental health issues as this group of clients can be complex and can have different treatment needs.

Police brutality is a topic that everybody confers to emphasize the burgeoning fear of the police. This comes in the form of excessive force which becomes a controversial topic for citizens and police alike. The nation has it’s own definition of what excessive force may be, as some believe using a Taser has the same intention as using a nightstick to apprehend scoundrels. Others may ascribe excessive force as a race crime; “In March 2015, the DOJ also issued a report detailing a pattern of clear racial disparities and discriminatory intent on the part of the Ferguson, Mo., police department”(Excessive or Reasonable Force by Police) resulting in uneasiness between the multiple groups regardless of their age; interestingly officers are also affected by the disparity of the community. The judgement they receive can actually affect how an officer decides to act because they

When a counselor has a new client they are working with, the client has to be assessed. When being assessed the counselor has to determine what issues the client may have. Through being assessed, the counselor may come to realize the client has more than one issue which is called co-occurring disorders. At this point the client will have to be treated for more than one disorder to effectively overcome the problems they are facing. Within this paper one will locate the prevalence of co-occurring disorders, mental health and substance abuse

More research is also needed in reference to citizens experiencing mental health and substance abuse issues. It appears that more force might be considered necessary when dealing with citizens who are under the influence of drugs and alcohol. The fact is that some people who are under the influence of drugs are harmless and tend to put up little resistance. Individuals with mental health concerns also vary in terms of resistance ; thus, it is very difficult to conduct research in reference to this population. Perhaps it is the perception of police officers that might be correlated to use of force pertaining to dealing with these types of individuals. More research is needed in reference to the number of officers who

Police brutality is the use of any force exceeding that reasonably necessary to accomplish a lawful police purpose. (Gregory Umbach) There is a very thin line as to what is acceptable and excessive use of force for police officers. Many police departments try their best to outline what is appropriate use of force to weed out these unacceptable practices. However, some evidence and scenarios point to race being a possible factor in police brutality. There exist two sides to this argument on the bias of race in police brutality. One side believes that race does play a role in the polices overuse of force, while the other side disagrees and states that other circumstances lead to the propensity of most police abused victims to be of the minority ethnic group. In this literature review, sources that directly relate race with police brutality and their excessive use of force shall be analyzed along with sources that state the opposite and find the police brutality coincidental to the race of the victim or officer. It is in my opinion that race clearly does lead to the increase in police brutality, as the police put themselves in confrontations more often with the minority groups, through the use of racial profiling in terms of stop and frisks.

The use of force and discretion used by officers has a large influence within real-world situations. Police discretion, by definition, is the power to make decisions of policy and practice. Public servants, such as police officers, hold the discretion on how to enforce law, when it needs to be enforced, and the use of force needed to enforce it. Police use of force, defined as acts that threaten or inflict physical harm on suspects (Terrill, 2003) has been an important topic of research since it was first argued to be a defining characteristic of policing. “Firearms, batons, and other forms of force (e.g. impact munitions) are likely to cause serious bodily injury or deaths have long been the traditional weapons of choice by police officers to accomplish their objectives (Fredrick, Kaminski, Cooney, & Sevigny 2014).” However, these are the exact situations that have caused groups such as police practitioners, policy makers, various human rights activist, you name it, to raise concerns regarding the serious injuries and fatalities resulting from the use of force.

Over the past few decades, many researches have strived to test and explain the correlation between violence and crime and mental illness. Moore and Hiday (2006) assert that up 22% of inmates has a mental illness, sometimes containing more mental illness patients than many psychiatric units. Due to these statistics it is evident how important it is to understand the causes of the correlations between crime and violence and mental disorders. This proposal wishes to explain and understand the possible correlation and the reasons for such correlation between mental health illnesses and violence and crime. Further research to test

51). The results suggested that 2,068 (58.4%) of the 3,544 encounters involved force being used at least once against the suspect (Terill, 2003, p. 65). Verbal force (50.3%) constituted the majority of all force used against suspects, and involvement of physical force in 21% of the encounters. In the breakdowns of physical force, pat downs were used in 12% of all encounters; handcuffing resulted in 10.4% of encounters; firm grip in 3.3%, and takedown maneuvers in 1.3% of the police-suspect encounters (Terill, 2003, pp. 66-65). In relation to force imposed against suspects when resistance is presented, in 3,397 of the total encounter, 57.5% of police officers imposed force against the individual when no resistance is presented; verbal force in 37.1% of the contacts; restraint in 18.6%; and impact at 1.8% of all encounters (Terill, 2003, p. 76). In addition, the number of encounters resulting in force imposed increased as resistance from the suspect increased as well. When suspects began to show some resistance during the encounter, the odds of police applying verbal force increased to 68.3%; physical restraint increased to 11.1% (Terill, 2003, p. 74). Based on the results yield from this study, the majority of force used against suspects are verbal; physical force were unlikely to be imposed, and higher level of physical force were rarely used in police-suspect

Whenever police officers come into contact with citizens, there is a chance that the encounter will digress to one in which force is used on a suspect. Fortunately, most police activities, such as traffic or investigative stops, or even arrests, do not result in the use of force (Alpert, 2004).

Research from (--------) Indicates that those of different ethnicities, and different sex, experience altercations with police more or less frequently. As shown below: