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New Mental Health App To Help Address Mental Health Crises

Tuesday, 6 October 2020 07:30

With the use of HealthIM, it is anticipated the Woodstock Police Service will consistently decrease their rate of apprehensions, reduce hospital wait times and enhance the care provided to individuals in crisis.

WOODSTOCK - Woodstock Police are once again putting mental health at the forefront. 

Officers will have another tool at their disposal with HealthIM, a system designed to improve overall effectiveness when responding to persons in a mental health crisis.

In 2013, Dr. Ron Hoffman developed a mobile app digitizing interRAI’s Brief Mental Health Screener (BMHS). This brief assessment tool, designed for law enforcement use, developed from a database of over 40,000 mental health assessments uses the indicators most commonly associated with violent outcomes.

Police users are guided through a series of 25 clinical questions based on the responses from the individual, their caregivers, bystanders or the user’s direct observations, allowing the officer to communicate in clinical language. Once the questions are completed, the responses are analyzed and the risk of harm is presented.

With the use of HealthIM, it is anticipated that the Woodstock Police Service will consistently decrease their rate of apprehensions, reduce hospital wait times and enhance the care provided to individuals in crisis. The Woodstock Police Service believes it is important to work with community partners, persons with mental illnesses and their families to reduce the stigma of mental illness and to share the responsibility for improving the quality of life for persons who suffer from mental illnesses and persons in crisis.

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