A police scheme revolutionising the front line in mental health care and unclogging accident and emergency units is to be rolled out across Scotland.
The national force and NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde have just completed a major pilot programme under which psychiatric nurses and officers worked more closely than ever before.
Partly inspired by best practice in cash-strapped English policing, the scheme both saved hours of officer time, improved services to vulnerable people.
Now so-called community triage will be permanently adopted in and around Glasgow, introduced in Edinburgh at weekends as others parts of the country explore how they can follow suit.
Police insiders have long warned that dealing with distressed people remains - despite high-noise politics on other issues - one of the main problems facing the force.
Accident and emergency wards - already extremely busy - have also become jammed with distressed people brought by officers, who have to wait while they are assessed. Most of these people are not sectioned under the Mental Health Act and are released after hours of waiting. That ties up both police officers and NHS staff.
Speaking when the pilot was launched, Chief Inspector Rosie Wright, who is championing the pilot, said she did not believe that the current system was helping those experiencing deeply distressing episodes , despite it eating up police and NHS resources.
The area commander said: "The books are just not balancing."
Her alternative - backed by NHS experts - is for officers to call in a team of out-of-hours mental health nurses to triage or assess people who are threatening self-harm or behaving in a worrying way.
Then a decision can be made on whether they just need some cooling off time - or whether they have to go to hospital.
Under the Glasgow pilot, which began in January and ended in June, all but four per cent of distressed people dealt with by police and
The pilot was carried out in West Dunbartonshire, Inverclyde, Glasgow and Renfrewshire.
Police Scotland officers and community psychiatric nurses (CPNs) attended 234 incidents - only some of which involved alleged criminality - during the period.
A total of 225 of people helped (some 96 per cent) were found to be fit and well by the CPNs and in no need of further intervention.
Nine people were admitted to hospital, and six were reported for offences after found to be fit and well by CPNs.
The system is now being trialled in the NHS Lothian area with other health boards and police divisions looking to develop similar services.
Chief Inspector Wright, however, stressed that triage was "not a fix-all".
The Herald earlier this year attended a briefing on the scheme. Chief Inspector Wright told beat officers: "If you are called to someone in a crisis situation, perhaps threatening suicide, then it's not for that.
"It is more slow-time incident, somebody threatening to self harm.
"It should provide you with more tools and save resource time."
The breakthrough in community triage comes as SAMH, the mental health charity, announced that it would work with GPs in deprived areas to offer "social prescription" support instead of, or alongside, anti-depressants.
The move came after surveys found 84 per cent of GPs, who only have short appointment times, thought there was a gap in services for those needing emotional support.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here