Testing the Impact of a Law Enforcement-Operated Co-responder Program for Youths: A Quasi-Experimental Approach.

Objective: The authors examined whether use of a co-responder program reduced the likelihood of an involuntary commitment examination as the disposition of a police encounter with youths experiencing a mental health crisis and 1 year after the initial incident.

Methods: Using a quasi-experimental design, the authors compared 206 incidents that involved the co-response program with 327 incidents that did not involve the program. Propensity score matching was used to balance groups on demographic and incident characteristics. The dependent variables included the disposition of the incident (deescalation or involuntary commitment examination), whether the youths experienced a later involuntary commitment examination within 1 year of the initial intervention, and time to the subsequent examination. Propensity score-weighted binary logistic regression and time-to-event analysis were used.

Results: The co-responder program was associated with a significantly lower likelihood of police officer-initiated involuntary commitment examinations and a lower likelihood of an involuntary commitment examination within 1 year. Eighty percent of the incidents that resulted in a co-response involving a police officer and a mental health professional were deescalated, allowing the youth to remain in the community with a safety plan, whereas 17% of incidents with a police-only response ended with crisis deescalation.

Conclusions: These findings provide further support for the implementation of co-responder options that are available to police officers during encounters with children and adolescents experiencing a mental health crisis.