Treatment for Mental Health and Substance Use: Spillovers to Police Safety

Monica Deza ()
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Monica Deza: Center for Policy Research, Maxwell School, Syracuse University, 426 Eggers Hall, Syracuse, NY 13244, https://www.maxwell.syr.edu/directory/monica-deza

No 261, Center for Policy Research Working Papers from Center for Policy Research, Maxwell School, Syracuse University

Abstract: We study the effect of community access to mental health and substance use treatment on police officer safety, which we proxy with on-duty assaults on officers. Police officers often serve as first-responders to people experiencing mental health and substance use crises, which can place police officers at risk. Combining agency-level data on police officer on-duty assaults and county-level data on the number of treatment centers that offer mental health and substance use care, we estimate two-way fixed-effects regressions and find that an additional four centers per county (the average annual increase observed in our data) leads to a 1.3% reduction per police agency in on-duty assaults against police officers. Established benefits of access to treatment for mental health and substance use appear to extend to the work environment of police officers.

Keywords: law enforcement; healthcare; on-duty assaults; mental health disorders; substance use disorders (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I1 I11 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 16 pages
Date: 2023-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ger, nep-hea, nep-law and nep-ure
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:max:cprwps:261

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