My relative's mental health crisis was averted by police

The Met Police commissioner, Mark Rowley, has announced his force will no longer routinely attend incidents involving the mentally ill after 31 August unless there is a “threat to life”

- ANNE ATKINS

As someone with a loved one who struggles with mental health problems, the news was like a kick to the stomach.

A member of our family has suffered severe mental illness for more than two decades. The police have sometimes provided a lifeline. The prospect that this essential service might be axed entirely – and deliberately, as a policy decision – to me seems chilling and dangerous.

I heard of an incident some time ago – a scene of such chaos that if you’d just walked in, you’d struggle to know what was going on, let alone how to deal with it. A young woman had been threatening her brother with a 12in kitchen knife. She was standing on a chair outside in the rain, soaked through, in nothing but boxers, a T-shirt and socks. And she was screaming. Curiously, her brother seemed not at all afraid but was calmly ringing the police.