Family and Caregiver’s Experiences of an Emergency Mental Health Crises of a Loved One

• In Event: Policing Responses to Mental Health Crises

Abstract

Family members play an essential role providing care for a loved one living with serious mental illness. During a psychiatric crisis, family members frequently initiate calls for emergency services and advocate for their relative when police respond (CAMH, 2017). Parents are most likely to be victims in mental health crises that involve violence (Copeland, 2007). There is a need to review the familial experience of such emergencies for enhanced police service responding. An integrative review was conducted to evaluate and synthesize the current state of knowledge of family and caregivers’ roles, lived experiences, and perspectives concerning emergency mental health crises arising for an adult relative. Particular attention was paid to crisis experiences with police involvement or joint police-health services response (e.g., mobile crisis teams). The initial literature search was performed by conducting title and abstract searches of key terms in EBSCO (CINAHL, PsycINFO, Criminal Justice Abstracts, Social Work Abstracts), PubMed (MEDLINE), and Google Scholar search engines. Over 3000 journal articles were retrieved and coded for inclusion. Data synthesis of research articles meeting inclusion criteria revealed caregiver themes related to exclusion, burden, and fear of stigmatization that provides novel insight into family experiences and needs that are informative for police practice.

Author

• Jennifer A. A. Lavoie, Wilfrid Laurier University