Dryden OPP MCRT program keeps busy
The Dryden OPP’s Mobile Crisis Response Team is seeing positive results after only two years.
The MCRT consists of a police officer and a social worker, to deal with mental health calls for service.
Constable Clark Patterson says in the first year, the unit handled over 604 calls.
“Obviously, these are only two years, and we don’t have a lot of years to pull stats from, just because the program is so young, but I would like to think…that this shows that we are getting a lower amount of mental health calls,” Patterson told the Dryden OPP Detachment Board meeting recently.
Patterson adds that they deal with all sorts of mental health calls.
“Attempts of suicide, threats of suicide, individuals that are unable to care for themselves. It doesn’t have to necessarily be, the person has schizophrenia or very obvious, easily presentable mental health disorder.”
Patterson says in the second year, the number of calls for the MCRT team dropped to 562.
