Drawing upon seven years of police calls for service data (2014–2020), this study examined the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on calls involving persons with perceived mental illness (PwPMI) using a Bayesian Structural Time Series. The findings revealed that PwPMI calls did not increase immediately after the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020. Instead, a sustained increase in PwPMI calls was identified in August 2020 that later became statistically significant in October 2020. Ultimately, the analysis revealed a 22% increase in PwPMI calls during the COVID-19 pandemic than would have been expected had the pandemic not taken place. The delayed effect of the pandemic on such calls points to a need for policymakers to prioritize widely accessible mental health care that can be deployed early during public health emergencies thus potentially mitigating or eliminating the need for increased police intervention, as was the case here.

本研究利用七年的警方呼叫服务数据（2014 年至 2020 年），使用贝叶斯结构时间序列研究了 COVID-19 大流行对涉及认知精神疾病患者 (PwPMI) 的呼叫的影响。调查结果显示，2020 年 3 月大流行开始后，PwPMI 电话并未立即增加。相反，2020 年 8 月发现 PwPMI 电话持续增加，后来在 2020 年 10 月变得具有统计意义。最终，分析显示，PwPMI 电话增加了 22%在 COVID-19 大流行期间，PwPMI 电话的数量比没有发生大流行时的预期有所增加。大流行对此类呼吁的延迟影响表明，政策制定者需要优先考虑可广泛获得的精神卫生保健，这些保健可以在公共卫生紧急情况下及早部署，从而有可能减轻或消除增加警察干预的需要，就像这里的情况一样。