The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Police Involvement in Mental Health Calls for Service

• Published date: 01 March 2025
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/08874034241303024
• Author: Christine Tartaro,Ruibin Lu
• Date: 01 March 2025

https://doi.org/10.1177/08874034241303024

Criminal Justice Policy Review

2025, Vol. 36(1-2) 3 –21

© The Author(s) 2024

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DOI: 10.1177/08874034241303024

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Article

The Impact of the

COVID-19 Pandemic on

Police Involvement in Mental

Health Calls for Service

Christine Tartaro1 and Ruibin Lu1

Abstract

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic not only threatened individuals’ physical

health but also caused a serious strain on mental health and access to care. Analyzing

4 years of data from 2019 through 2022, this study examines whether the frequency

of mental health calls for service and police-initiated stops for mental health reasons

changed over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using interrupted time-

series analysis, the results show that police involvement in mental health care was

significantly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, different changes were

observed between dispatched calls for service and police-initiated stops for mental

health reasons.

Keywords

mental health, police, calls for service, COVID-19

The first case of COVID-19 was detected in the United States on January 20, 2020. On

March 11, the World Health Organization formally declared COVID-19 a pandemic

(Centers for Disease Control [CDC], n.d.). At that point, there were 118,000 cases

across 14 countries. Two days later, the Trump Administration declared a nationwide

emergency (CDC, n.d.). The virus and public health measures associated with trans-

mission mitigation efforts impacted the lives of almost everyone and included disrup-

tions to social lives (Ernst et al., 2022; Larivière-Bastien et al., 2022), work patterns

1Stockton University, Galloway, NJ, USA

Corresponding Author:

Christine Tartaro, Distinguished Professor of Criminal Justice, Stockton University, 101 Vera King Farris

Drive, Galloway, NJ 08205, USA.

Email: Christine.tartaro@stockton.edu

1303024CJPXXX10.1177/08874034241303024Criminal Justice Policy Review XX(X)Tartaro and Lu

research-article2024

4Criminal Justice Policy Review 36(1-2)

and environments (Akbulaev et al., 2020; International Labour Organization, 2020),

and leisure activities (Bazett-Jones et al., 2021; Kim et al., 2022). These disruptions to

daily life had the potential to negatively impact mental health, since they brought

about financial insecurity (Cheng et al., 2021; Claes et al., 2021; Elbogen et al., 2021;

International Labour Organization, 2020; Scerri et al., 2021), increased isolation,

interrupted access to sources of social support (Brülhart et al., 2021; Elbogen et al.,

2021; Fuller et al., 2022; Scerri et al., 2021), and made it difficult to escape dysfunc-

tional home environments (Olding et al., 2021; Ratnasekera et al., 2022; Scerri et al.,

2021). While COVID was posing significant challenges to individuals, it also impacted

how people sought help and how medical, social service, and criminal justice organi-

zations responded to requests for assistance (Brülhart et al., 2021; Butt et al., 2020;

Dragovic et al., 2020; Feijt et al., 2020; Lum et al., 2020a, 2020b; Piquero, 2021;

Scerri et al., 2021; Valitutti et al., 2020).

COVID and Mental Health

In the months and years following the start of the pandemic, researchers amassed evi-

dence of the negative impact of COVID on mental health. Horigian et al. (2021) sur-

veyed people residing in the United States in April and May 2020 and compared

findings with earlier studies of mental health and substance abuse in the United States.

Results indicated increases in moderate to severe anxiety, higher prevalence of loneli-

ness, and increased alcohol and drug use. Researchers in Great Britain studied mental

health during the first 6 weeks of that country’s nationwide lockdown (O’Connor

et al., 2021). The prevalence of self-reported depression was higher than the time

before COVID. There was also an increase in suicidal ideation during the first few

weeks of the lockdown. The findings of mental health research specific to New Jersey,

the location of the current study, are in line with results throughout the United States

and abroad. Ostrofsky and colleagues (2023) reported that 30% of a random sample of

New Jersey residents reported a negative change in their mental health during the

pandemic. Anxiety and depression were the most common mental health disorders that

appeared to be impacted by the pandemic, and 19% of respondents also reported an

increase in alcohol and/or recreational drug use (Ostrofsky et al., 2023).

One notable finding among the COVID and mental health literature is that the

negative impacts of COVID on mental health were not equally distributed across the

population. People from socially disadvantaged backgrounds and those with preexist-

ing mental health challenges tended to report the most severe mental health problems

associated with COVID (Ben Brik et al., 2022; Claes et al., 2021; Elbogen et al.,

2021; Fitzpatrick et al., 2020; O’Connor et al., 2021; Olff et al., 2021; Thomeer et al.,

2023). Mental health counselors in Spain reported that the COVID crisis was generally

having a negative impact on the country’s mental health, but they observed that the

changes produced by the pandemic appeared to be especially difficult for groups lack-

ing access to services (Hervalejo et al., 2020). Thomeer et al. (2023) reported that

mental health problems, specifically depression and anxiety, were more common

among racial and ethnic minorities in the United States during the COVID pandemic.