Police and mental health in elementary and secondary schools: A systematic review of the literature and implications for nursing

School Nurse Management of Behavioral Health, Violence, and Trauma-Related Emergencies: Findings from a Statewide Survey

School nurses are critical components of school-based interdisciplinary teams supporting student behavioral health. The purpose of the present study is to understand the extent to which school nurses in New Mexico across grade levels manage emergencies related to behavioral health, violence, and trauma. The study also seeks to identify which topics the school nurses received continuing education (CE) for, and which topics they consider to be important to their practice. Analyses of 2019 statewide survey data show a considerable number of school nurses in New Mexico provide management for behavioral health, violence, and trauma-related emergencies, and nurses in secondary schools are significantly more likely than nurses in primary schools to report managing these emergencies and to have received CE on behavioral health topics. Our findings reaffirm the essential role of school nurses in addressing emergent student health issues and underscore the need for practice- and competency-based behavioral health CE opportunities.

Disparate discipline faced by black youth: The need for bias mitigation and school nursing impact to promote school connectedness

School connectedness is needed to improve youth mental health. Developing a school connection is more arduous for Black youth with a history of pervasive exclusionary discipline. This narrative review discusses academic and socioemotional consequences of school removals while highlighting disparities for Black youth. A comprehensive literature search was conducted, identifying relevant studies and publications using electronic databases; results from the last ten years were preferable but older references were included if deemed important. Recommendations for elevating the influence of school nursing has been included to help mitigate disparities and racial bias, considering historical discipline trends and rising mental health needs.

Reasons police respond in schools: An analysis of narrative data from police incident reports

BACKGROUND

Communities across the U.S. have acted to eliminate or curb police presence in schools. These efforts have primarily focused on School Resource Officers. However, school staff also call upon local police to respond in their buildings, for example by calling 911. The reasons that police are called upon to respond in schools has rarely been studied.

OBJECTIVE

The current study aimed to identify the primary reasons that local police were asked to respond to incidents in one urban school district, and the outcomes of those responses.

PARTICIPANTS AND SETTING

We analyzed 882 police incident report narratives, selected from a stratified sample of 57 schools in one urban school district during the 2017-18 school year. Incident reports, which were written by officers responding in schools, included narrative descriptions of officer intervention, the events precipitating police involvement, and outcomes of incidents.

METHODS

By coding incident report narratives, we identified categories describing the reasons for police response to events in schools and the outcomes of those events.

RESULTS

Most incident reports originating from school addresses (n = 730; 82.8 %) involved students. Among those reports, police most frequently responded to instances of sexual physical violence (17.5 %), physical assault (15.8 %), dysregulated behavior (11.2 %), threatening language (10.8 %), and threat of or actual school violence (4.4 %). Incidents involving students most often resulted in: (1) parents/guardians being contacted (57.3 %), (2) schools engaging in disciplinary actions (39.7 %) or school safety actions (27.0 %), and (3) child maltreatment reports being made to Crimes Against Children (a subdivision of the police department focused on child maltreatment; 26.0 %) or to the Department of Children and Families (26.2 %).

CONCLUSIONS

Findings indicate that many events leading to police responses in schools are related to maltreatment and behavioral health. These events rarely result in a criminal justice response, and most often result in action by families and schools (e.g., contacting parents/guardians, school disciplinary/safety actions), and filed reports of maltreatment. Additional supports in these areas may have the potential to reduce the perceived need to call upon police and to provide more direct access to services for students.

Calls from Boston Schools for Police Psychiatric Emergency Response: A Study of 911 Call Record Data from 2014 to 2018

This study examines patterns and trends in 911 calls from Boston public school addresses related to mental health and physical assaults/fights generated from 2014 to 2018. We analyzed 12,113 Boston Police Department (BPD) 911 call records from 102 Boston Public School addresses during the 2014-2018 school years. In addition, we separately analyzed calls coded by BPD as Emotionally Disturbed Person ("EDP"), indicating a psychiatric crisis was the primary reason for the call, as well as calls coded as "Fight," "Assault," or "Assault and battery." Call frequency ranged from 0 to 277 per school each year. Although the annual average number of calls increased each school year over the 4-year period, this was primarily due to an increase in hang-ups and abandoned calls. Overall, 7.4% calls were coded as EDP and 6.5% were coded as assault/fight. Call volume was highest in the middle of the school day, with a median time of 12 pm. EDP calls were significantly earlier in the day than non-EDP calls, and the percentage of calls labeled as EDP decreased in frequency each day over the course of the week. There were more overall 911 calls, on average, per day in late spring than in other seasons. The frequency with which schools call upon police as emergency service providers for psychiatric crises indicates a need for additional school-based resources. Such resources may be most effective if they are allocated mid-day, responsive to changing student needs over the course of the week, and increased in spring.

A Scoping Review of Police Involvement in School Crisis Response for Mental Health Emergencies

The purpose of this scoping literature review was to examine research on police involvement in school mental health crisis response. The search was conducted in PsychInfo, PubMed, and ERIC and initially identified 315 articles. After applying inclusion/exclusion criteria, 47 articles remained. Detailed review and data extraction by three independent reviewers resulted in a final article count of nine. Three primary themes were identified across articles: (1) perceptions and consequences of law enforcement presence in schools; (2) the role of school-community partnerships in successful crisis response models; and (3) gaps in research and challenges of implementing and scaling existing models. Though in practice law enforcement officers are often involved in school mental health crisis response, there is limited empirical research supporting this approach. Our review did not return any randomized trials. In the absence of empirical evidence supporting the use of current models, there is a need for research on law enforcement involvement in school crisis response and, more broadly, community-partnered models of responding to student mental health needs.