IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jijerp/v16y2019i23p4786-d292154.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Repeated Police Mental Health Act Detentions in England and Wales: Trauma and Recurrent Suicidality

Author

Listed:
  • Claire Warrington

    (School of Applied Social Science, University of Brighton, Falmer BN1 9PH, UK)

Abstract

Most police Mental Health Act (Section 136) detentions in England and Wales relate to suicide prevention. Despite attempts to reduce detention rates, numbers have risen almost continually. Although Section 136 has been subject to much academic and public policy scrutiny, the topic of individuals being detained on multiple occasions remains under-researched and thus poorly understood. A mixed methods study combined six in-depth interviews with people who had experienced numerous suicidal crises and police intervention, with detailed police and mental health records. A national police survey provided wider context. Consultants with lived experience of complex mental health problems jointly analysed interviews. Repeated detention is a nationally recognised issue. In South East England, it almost exclusively relates to suicide or self-harm and accounts for a third of all detentions. Females are detained with the highest frequencies. The qualitative accounts revealed complex histories of unresolved trauma that had catastrophically damaged interviewee’s relational foundations, rendering them disenfranchised from services and consigned to relying on police intervention in repeated suicidal crises. A model is proposed that offers a way to conceptualise the phenomenon of repeated detention, highlighting that long-term solutions to sustain change are imperative, as reactive-only responses can perpetuate crisis cycles.

Suggested Citation

  • Claire Warrington, 2019. "Repeated Police Mental Health Act Detentions in England and Wales: Trauma and Recurrent Suicidality," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 16(23), pages 1-15, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:16:y:2019:i:23:p:4786-:d:292154
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/23/4786/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/23/4786/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Shiner, Michael & Scourfield, Jonathan & Fincham, Ben & Langer, Susanne, 2009. "When things fall apart: Gender and suicide across the life-course," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 69(5), pages 738-746, September.
    2. Benson, Outi & Gibson, Susanne & Boden, Zoë V.R. & Owen, Gareth, 2016. "Exhausted without trust and inherent worth: A model of the suicide process based on experiential accounts," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 126-134.
    3. Sulzer, Sandra H., 2015. "Does “difficult patient” status contribute to de facto demedicalization? The case of borderline personality disorder," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 82-89.
    4. Roderic Pipe & Ashok Bhat & Barry Matthews & Judy Hampstead, 1991. "Section 136 and African/Afro-Caribbean Minorities," International Journal of Social Psychiatry, , vol. 37(1), pages 14-23, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Marzano, Lisa & Hawton, Keith & Rivlin, Adrienne & Fazel, Seena, 2011. "Psychosocial influences on prisoner suicide: A case-control study of near-lethal self-harm in women prisoners," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 72(6), pages 874-883, March.
    2. Ayuandini, Sherria, 2017. "Finger Pricks and Blood Vials: How doctors medicalize ‘cultural’ solutions to demedicalize the ‘broken’ hymen in the Netherlands," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 177(C), pages 61-68.
    3. Jenkins, Tania M. & Short, Susan E., 2017. "Negotiating intersex: A case for revising the theory of social diagnosis," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 175(C), pages 91-98.
    4. Turowetz, Jason, 2022. "Interaction order and the labeling of disorder: How parents mobilize personal knowledge in the clinic to resist medicalization of their children's behavior," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 294(C).
    5. Mrozynski, Hannah & Kuhn, Eva, 2022. "Reasoning for autonomous suicide? A qualitative approach to pre-suicidal decision-making," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 296(C).
    6. Belur, Jyoti & Tilley, Nick & Daruwalla, Nayreen & Kumar, Meena & Tiwari, Vinay & Osrin, David, 2014. "The social construction of ‘dowry deaths’," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 1-9.
    7. Cara Richardson & Adele Dickson & Kathryn A. Robb & Rory C. O’Connor, 2021. "The Male Experience of Suicide Attempts and Recovery: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(10), pages 1-15, May.
    8. Madden, Erin Fanning, 2019. "Intervention stigma: How medication-assisted treatment marginalizes patients and providers," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 232(C), pages 324-331.
    9. Scourfield, Jonathan & Fincham, Ben & Langer, Susanne & Shiner, Michael, 2012. "Sociological autopsy: An integrated approach to the study of suicide in men," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 74(4), pages 466-473.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:16:y:2019:i:23:p:4786-:d:292154. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.