Peel Regional Police has released a new video online that features its mobile crisis team partnership with Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA), Peel Dufferin Branch.
As part of its social media outreach for World Mental Health Day (Oct. 10), Peel Regional Police posted “MCRRT: A Health Response to a Health Problem,” a two-minute clip that explains what the police force is doing as part of the Mobile Crisis Rapid Response Team with CMHA Peel Dufferin to ensure informed, safer responses to mental health and addiction crises.
In January 2020, Peel Regional Police and CMHA Peel Dufferin partnered to form the MCRRT program. These teams pair a mental health crisis worker with front-line officers to provide a health response to a health problem in real time. The MCRRT program operates two cars per day, operating year-round from noon to midnight.
In its first nine months, MCRRT reduced apprehensions during mental health and addictions calls from 70 per cent of calls to less than 25 per cent. This allows people in crisis to receive the health response they need through community partners while reducing the impact on hospitals and front-line operations.