Could Psychiatrists Help With Police Encounters?

Police departments have become a de facto arm of the American mental-health system. Research suggests that about 2 million people with serious mental illness are booked into jails in the United States each year. A 2016 review of studies estimated that 1 in 4 people with mental illness has a history of police arrest. The Treatment Advocacy Center, a nonprofit that studies topics related to mental health, has calculated that the odds of being killed during a police encounter are 16 times as high for individuals with untreated serious mental illness as they are for people in the broader population.