Building bridges at the Douglas between mental health patients and police officers .
Douglas Hospital program aims to ease traditional tensions between two sides
François Beauchamp was waiting for his girlfriend on the corner of St. Denis and Ste. Catherine streets in December when three police officers started asking what he was doing there. A chemist in his early 40s, Beauchamp did not appreciate the questioning.
What the police didn’t know during the exchange that followed is that Beauchamp suffers from borderline personality disorder, a mental illness characterized by a lack of impulse control and a tendency toward extreme emotions.
“The worst thing about it is you’re aware it’s happening, you can see yourself spiralling out of control,” Beauchamp said. “But you can’t do anything about it.”
Well-spoken and affable, Beauchamp is indiscernible from someone without mental health issues.
Except that every now and then, when talking about his life, tears start stream- ing uncontrollably down his face. Beauchamp worked for 10 years as a chemist for the Pfizer pharmaceutical giant and is now an unemployed day-patient at a mental health ward.
That December night, Beauchamp started calling the police “imbeciles” and “rotten fish” before ending up handcuffed and ticketed $450 for disturbing the peace. Beauchamp freely admits he “put a little too much butter on my bread,” using the French expression for going overboard, which he says he couldn’t help.
He also noted has not been a big fan of the police, especially those fresh out of the academy he finds can sometimes be brash and disrespectful.
Yet there he was Wednesday out on the grounds of the Douglas Hospital Mental University Institute in Verdun in the presence of roughly 30 uniformed officers. Half were from nearby Station 16; others came from the riot squad, or the cavalry unit with their horses. They brought their remotecontrolled robot and the gear they use when defusing bombs, and invited patients into their squad cars and mobile command post. More than 200 patients — children in the early morning; adults later on — came out to check out the equipment and pet the horses and speak to the officers.
The event was spearheaded by the Douglas to bring the two sides together and present the human faces of an often confrontational relationship.
“I think the two sides tend to see one another as caricatures,” Beauchamp said. “This is a good opportunity to see each other as human beings. And to bring the issue of mental illness out into the open, because it is hidden in our society.”
The initiative was created by Elizabeth Huk, a teacher at the institute since 1981, who noticed the negative reactions of patients toward police at the centre or on TV. She organized a survey to determine their attitudes toward officers, and saw that it fell mostly into two categories: fear and loathing.
Last year, the first Meet and Greet the Police event was held on the grounds of the Douglas. With the deinstitutionalization of mental health patients, police are often the new front-line workers for people who are suffering a mental health crisis, despite the fact they receive little training.
“Police officers often have to be doing things seen as unpleasant, and they might be perceived as the enemy,” Huk said. “Often, patients in distress can’t see that it’s for their own good.”
Montreal police responded to 1.2 million calls in 2011. Given that anywhere from three to seven per cent of all police calls are related to mental illness, the city’s force deals with as many as 80,000 calls a year related to mentally or behaviourally disturbed people.
Most police interviewed said most of their training comes on the job.
The issue came to the forefront last year after four people were killed in the space of eight months during police interventions involving mentally disturbed individuals.
Resources for police dealing with mental health calls have improved greatly over the last 10 years, said Michael Arruda, an adviser to the Montreal police force on health care issues and crisis intervention techniques. Three intervention models are being developed or have been started, which involve either sending mental health professionals, a mix of health professionals and police, or a police team with specialized training out on calls.
Events like this help individuals “see the human side of police,” Arruda said. They also remind police that people with mental health issues are not perpetually disconnected from reality, but rather regular people who are dealing with an illness, Arruda said.
After five years on the force in Verdun near the Douglas, Constable Yan Surprenant has had ample opportunity to interact with the mentally ill. It has served to reinforce his conviction that human contact is at the basis of his job.
“And it reminds me that I have been very fortunate in life,” he said.
At the end of the Meet and Greet, the officers cooked a barbecue lunch for the patients. At a picnic table in the shade of a maple tree, Beauchamp and Constable Surprenant chatted and shared a few laughs over hotdogs.