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Living with Serious Mental Illness, Police Encounters, and Relationships of Power: A Critical Phenomenological StudyQuiring, Stephanie Q. 12 1900 (has links)
Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / The criminalization of mental illness has drawn and kept a disproportionate
number of people living with mental illness in jails and prisons across the United States.
The criminal legal system is ill-equipped or unequipped to provide meaningful mental
health care. Police often serve as gatekeepers to the criminal legal system in the midst of
encounters involving people living with serious mental illness. The literature that
examines police decision-making amid these highly discretionary encounters has been
primarily situated in post-positivist, quantitative methodologies focused on police
perspectives. There is a dearth of research with the direct involvement of people living
with serious mental illness that employs more advanced qualitative methodologies.
The purpose of this study was to understand the lived experience of police
encounters from the perspective of people living with serious mental illness through
multi-level analysis of the interpersonal and structural contexts which underpin these
encounters. This critical phenomenological study used interpretative phenomenological
analysis as process. A sample of 16 adults were recruited using purposive and snowball
sampling and completed semi-structured interviews. The findings reported two
descriptive areas for participants—aspects of serious mental illness and contemplations of
power. The findings also included the interpretive analysis organized around six themes
that emerged regarding the lived experience of police encounters: (a) significant context,
to include serious mental illness, was made invisible, (b) the carceral response to serious
mental illness and interpersonal issues, (c) law enforcement’s power to force submission, (d) facets of escalation, (e) law enforcement encounters lacked essential care, and (f) law
enforcement encounters served as a microcosm of the criminal legal system.
The implications of the study’s findings on police encounters as they are currently
framed in the largely post-positivist, quantitative body of research are discussed. In
addition, the current wave of national police response models and reform are considered
and connected to implications for social work practice. Finally, culminating in the
findings’ implications for a growing edge of critical phenomenology that incorporates
intersectionality and disciplinary power and the central role of an abolition feminist
praxis at the nexus of mental health, crisis response, and collective care.
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Examining police, health, and mental health crisis response teamsTheuer, Ania January 2024 (has links)
Scarce community mental health resources have led to people in crisis (PIC) overusing the emergency department (ED) and encountering police more frequently. To divert PIC from the ED and criminal justice system, and support them in their community, police services have implemented crisis response teams (CRTs). CRTs refer to police, health and mental health crisis response. Evidence of CRTs’ effectiveness in achieving their desired outcomes is limited, mixed, and/or anecdotal. I completed three studies using various theoretical and methodological approaches, which included: (a) a critical interpretative synthesis (CIS) of the conditions under which CRTs are formed, their features, and their outcomes; (b) a policy analysis using a case study design to examine how and why a CRT model was adopted in Hamilton, Canada; and (c) a what’s the problem represented to be (WPR) critical policy analysis of why police are implicated in crisis response. The CIS presents a conceptual framework depicting how unresolved structural conditions produce system- and individual-level challenges. Second, the case study examines the mobile crisis rapid response team (MCRRT) development in Hamilton. The analysis shows that initiatives that incrementally expand on the boundaries of existing programs are likely to be adopted. Third, drawing on WPR, we excavate problem representations within policy and policy-related texts to understand why police-based CRTs are expanded in Ontario. When mental health is framed in terms of safety and implicated within discourses about risk and danger police intervention is legitimized. Collectively, these studies provide a theoretical framework connecting structural, system, and individual factors most relevant to CRTs; demonstrate that an incremental approach to CRT adoption did not disrupt existing system arrangements; and problematizations within government policies that legitimize police in mental health crisis response. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / Since deinstitutionalization, during which mental health patients were discharged into the community, this population has had more frequent encounters with police, contributing to criminalization and tragedies. They have also increasingly sought mental health crisis support in emergency departments. Police, health, and mental health crisis response teams (CRTs) have been implemented as an alternative response to people with mental health issues who are in crisis. To date, CRTs have been widely implemented but with little, mixed, and/or anecdotal evidence demonstrating their effectiveness. This dissertation contextualizes information about CRTs by presenting (a) a conceptual framework on CRTs, outlining the structural, system, and individual conditions under which CRTs are formed, their features, and outcomes; (b) a case study that examined under what conditions a CRT was developed and implemented in Hamilton, Canada; and (c) a critical discourse analysis of CRTs.
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