ArticleBMC public health2025
Responding to crisis: the intersection of police officer attitudes, organizational climate, and mental health crises.
Article in BMC public health, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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Abstract
backgroundPolice responses to people with serious mental illness (SMI) disproportionately result in negative outcomes, underscoring the importance of understanding the factors that may influence how police respond to mental health crises. Little research has examined officer attitudes toward mental illness, and no study has examined implicit bias toward mental illness among police officers or how bias and police departmental climate may impact outcomes in mental health crises. The present study assesses the role of explicit and implicit bias toward mental illness, as well as departmental climate, on police officer decision-making in a mental health crisis.
methodsPolice officers in the United States (n = 198) were recruited from personal contacts, emails to leadership and administration in police departments, and Police1 (a policing blog). Police officers completed self-report questionnaires, two implicit association tests, a police organizational climate measure, and questions related to use of force, arrest, mental health transport, and no action decisions based on a written vignette of an officer encounter with a person with SMI.
resultsResults demonstrate police officers who desired greater social distance from people with SMI were less likely to transport them to mental health services, whereas those who endorsed higher levels of microaggressions against people with SMI were more likely to transport them to services. Additionally, officers with more negative attitudes toward mental illness were less likely to take action in a mental health crisis. Finally, officer-related procedurally just organizational climate moderated the relationship between bias and officer decision-making: those with the lowest ratings of officer-related organizational climate, and highest levels of implicit bias toward people with SMI, were least likely to transport a person with SMI to services or take action in a mental health crisis. DISCUSSION: Overall, this study has implications for how police respond to people with SMI in mental health crises and its findings may inform efforts to reduce adverse outcomes related to these interactions.
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