Independent TD for Laois Offaly, Carol Nolan, has expressed her concern about the increasing number of incidences being logged on the Garda Pulse system under the category, ‘detained under the Mental Health Act 2001.’
Deputy Nolan was speaking after the Minister for Justice Helen McEntee confirmed the details to her in reply to a parliamentary question she had placed on the issue.
Minister McEntee stated that she had been informed by the Garda authorities that a search of the PULSE database, conducted on 10 February 2022 to identify any incident of type ‘Mental Health Act (detained under)’ reported nationwide.
It was subsequently found that a total of 6,315 such incidents were recorded during 2021.
Information previously supplied to Deputy Nolan last June revealed that Garda authorities recorded 5757 such incidents in 2020.
There were 4002 such incident types on the PULSE System in 2018 and 4816 incidents in 2019.
Commenting on the information provided to her by Minister McEntee, Deputy Nolan said, “It is important to recall that these figures relate to the number of incidents, and so the same person may be associated with more than one incident over the course of a given year.”
“But that being said, we have to remember that Garda members, while empathetic and dedicated, are not mental health professionals. Their primary duty is to enforce the law and protect the communities they serve. Increasingly however they are finding themselves on the sharp end of having to intervene in incidences which may have only developed because of the lack of mental health services. They may then find themselves in a situation where they are being heavily criticised for the management of complex mental health scenarios, that are essentially, problems not of their own making.”
“This is grossly unfair, not only to Garda members, but perhaps more importantly, to the many thousands of vulnerable mentally ill people who risk being criminalised because they did not receive the kind of preventative mental health support they needed,” concluded Deputy Nolan.
Since 2014, the HSE (National Office for Suicide Prevention) has been a stakeholder in providing training to Trainee Gardaí.
Trainee Gardaí undertake the two day internationally recognised ASIST workshop (Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training), which is co-delivered with the HSE.
The ASIST workshop is described as a ‘suicide first aid programme’, which equips trainees with skills required to discuss suicide with a person at risk and to make an intervention to reduce the immediate risk of suicide.
In addition, Garda Trainees participate in workshops during which they examine “the area of vulnerability and minority groups and engage in summative assessment whereby the trainees must engage with research regarding vulnerabilities amongst minority societal groupings.”
As part of Custody Management training, sworn members must complete modules on the management of mental health patients as prisoners, including management of Self-Harm and Excited Delirium related to Drug or Alcohol abuse.
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