People who suffer from a psychosis or are suicidal often meet the police before being allowed to see health care personnel. But psychiatry can also ask the police to pick people up for them. This is known as hand-holding and these cases take more and more of the police time and resources.

Last year, SVT was able to report that from 2013 to 2018, an increase of 40 percent was seen linked to how often the police drive people to psychiatry or between different hospitals. The police in Uppsala are no exception.

- We go daily to cases linked to mental illness, says Stefan Siesling.

Driving mentally ill throughout the county

But mental illness is by no means limited to Uppsala. If a person is requested to be hand-ridden, or forcibly disposed of, in the outer areas of the police area, it is a police patrol and the person drives to psychiatry in Uppsala.

- We usually solve that with so-called relay driving. A patrol would then pick up the person in Östhammar and then drive half the distance where another patrol shows up and drives the last bit to psychiatry in Uppsala, says Stefan Siesling, external commander of the Uppsala police.

Suggested solution: PAM

So how does Stefan Siesling want to deal with the situation? He suggests that you do as in Stockholm County, which now uses PAM (psychiatric acute mobility) - an ambulance dedicated to cases linked to mental illness.

At the moment, psychiatry in the Uppsala Region is undergoing a major review. To see where and how any efficiency improvements can be made. The results of this screening are expected to be presented shortly. At present, however, it is unclear whether the issue of PAM teams in Uppsala will be addressed.

But what do politicians say about this? In the clip, regional council Malin Sjöberg Högrell tells about her views on the matter and Stefan Siesling about the police's work situation.