Stumbling from One Disaster to Another: The COVID-19 Pandemic and Mental Health Calls for Police Service across Canada

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic had a significant impact on crime in Canada and internationally. However, less is known about the impact of the pandemic on police-reported mental-health-related incidents. We explore three types of mental-health-related incidents (suicide and suicide attempts, Mental Health Act apprehensions, and mental health [other]) against property and violent crimes, across 13 police jurisdictions in Canada. Despite an international decline in most crime types during COVID-19, we find general stability across police-reported mental-health-related incidents. These findings suggest that the change in social behaviour that reduced opportunities for crime did not have a similar effect on mental-health-related incidents. It also suggests that calls for increased police budgets to respond to expected increases in mental-health-related incidents may be unjustified.