Mobile Crisis Teams’ Reliance on Law Enforcement for Multiple Key Functions

Mobile crisis teams (MCTs), a core component of the crisis services continuum, respond to psychiatric emergencies in community-based settings and divert people experiencing mental health crises from jails and hospitals (1, 2). Yet even as policy makers expand the reach of MCTs in the United States, little is known about the extent to which MCTs collaborate with law enforcement.

In this Datapoints column, we highlight findings from the National Survey of Mobile Crisis Teams, the most comprehensive study of its kind (3). The 51-item survey was disseminated in 2022 to MCT programs and national crisis services stakeholders (e.g., National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors newsletter subscribers). The survey was limited by its convenience sampling approach and, for most survey items, its structured response options (i.e., respondents chose from predetermined responses). Respondents may have interpreted the wording of the items in different ways.

The survey yielded 554 unique responses from 45 states. Respondents could complete as many survey items as they wished. Respondents’ job roles (multiple responses permitted) included MCT program director or manager (N=237 of 501, 47%), MCT clinician (N=105, 21%), other (N=78, 16%), MCT clinical supervisor (N=63, 13%), and executive director or CEO of the organization that oversees the MCT program (N=59, 12%). Respondents also reported whether their MCTs served populations of 500,000 or more people (N=155 of 500, 31%), 100,000–499,999 people (N=183, 37%), or less than 100,000 people (N=162, 32%).

One of the primary findings of the survey was the reported degree of MCT and law enforcement collaboration (Figure 1). Scenarios that include active violence or use of a loaded firearm warrant law enforcement involvement and might explain why most respondents reported law enforcement as a partnered agency (N=441 of 505, 87%), law enforcement transportation under some circumstances (N=386 of 460, 84%), and MCT nonresponse to incidents with a high risk of violence (N=172 of 316, 54%). Nevertheless, many incidents to which MCTs respond do not involve violence, firearms, or criminality. More research is needed on the type and frequency of law enforcement involvement with MCT operations to understand why, for instance, 17% (N=76 of 460) of respondents reported exclusive use of law enforcement for transportation and 8% (N=43 of 511) reported law enforcement as the primary source of MCT oversight, when both scenarios, given the nature of MCTs, should have incident rates near 0%. This area of study is especially important considering that some persons report experiencing trauma while interacting with police during mental health crises (4).