I am undertaking a PhD looking at Section 136 of the UK Mental Health Act. Section 136 is a UK based directive which permits a police officer to legally remove a person from a public place, who the officer believes to be in distress, in need of immediate care and control and transfer them to a hospital place of safety. My work looks at how this provision works from the perspectives of all stakeholders involved (i.e. service user, carer, police, mental health professional and ambulance workers). Tied in with my keen interest in global mental health, I am interested in finding out how this works in low to middle income countries (i.e. Asia and Latin America of particular interest) especially from a trans cultural psychiatric perspective. It would be good to link with anyone who is involved in this type of work and/or has an active interest in this area.
Comments
Submitted by waternut on 10 March 2012 - 6:39am.
I am a doctoral student and I am completing my dissertation in similar topic. My chair forwarded this link to me and thought I would be interested in sharing some aspects with you. Although my topic is not around middle income countries, it is certainly in middle income state of the US, the state of Maine. Even though Maine has certainly some high income population, the police mostly is involved with middle to very low income population. I would be glad to dialog my findings with you and compare results with you if you are interested. Certainly the political struggles may be drastically different from other countries but nevertheless the barriers our officers face with indiviudals with mental health illness are exceeding their abilities and put extensive pressure and expectations on the officers on duty.
Beata Wiktor - 10 March 2012
waternut