The police’s response to mental health issues has been branded ’Victorian’ by an MLC with 20 years’ experience in the field.

Bill Henderson MLC was a mental health nurse and later a night manager of psychiatric services before he began his parliamentary career.

He told Tynwald’s social affairs policy and review committee that he had kept in contact with his former colleagues and has a ’good insight’ into issues in the island’s mental health services.

The committee, chaired by David Cretney MLC, is currently investigating suicide in the island.

Mr Henderson was asked what he thought of the response to incidents involving mental health problems.

He said: ’I can only say that I find what has been happening is utterly appalling, degrading and so Victorian in outlook and discriminatory to the point where it turns my stomach.

’Yes, there are two nurses now working with the police but I want that built on because we still have in last year’s Chief Constable’s report something like 23 to 27 incidents a week where police are the first respondents to a mental health incident.’

However, Mr Henderson said that was not the police’s fault and rather it represents a wider issue with how mental health is funded and perceived.

He added: ’In general health, you wouldn’t call for a policeman if someone collapsed in Strand Street, you’d ring an ambulance.’

While stating he believed the mental health services were still underfunded, Mr Henderson praised the current administration saying it ’pushed for improvements’ to the service more so than any other in his time in politics.

Mr Henderson and Mr Cretney were also critical of how suicides and inquests are reported in the island, an issue the latter has raised in the past.

Mr Henderson noted that suicide often ’makes major headlines’ in the island.

He added: ’They [the media] may not go into detail but certainly the virtue of printing somebody’s picture and putting a monstrous headline with it and the effects that has on the family I don’t think does our modern community any good at all.’

We asked the police to respond to Mr Henderson’s points, but by the time we went to press, we had not received one.