#WHY are cops being used as mental health workers??? they're threatening and foreceful at best

[ssaalexblake]

I feel like we need to talk about how Yaz ending up in the police because the person who “saved” her was a police officer, one whom was sent to find her, is a story that can and SHOULD be talked about in context of ‘why are the cops being called in to help with a mental health crises?’

Because had Yaz actually been put in contact with an actual person in the correct field her teenage brain would have read ‘this is the way to help people’ as being a mental health advocate and/or professional for kids. That the cop she got was kind to her and said the right thing was just a bit of extra training on her part and luck! It wasn’t like, a cop’s job description to do that, they’ve been drafted for it because screw budgets for the health sector, apparently.  Yaz apparently just got a pep talk from this lady, and yes, after this talk she dug herself out of that hole she was in, but a few correct and kind words are not a great help to most people.Yaz is never shown to be given any actual help for her mental health issues. An actual mental health advocate would have done more. At the very least known they Should have done more.  

Yaz is frustrated in ep 1 because she wants to help people, not get stuck trying to get adults to stop squabbling over a parking space dispute! Because Yaz thinks being a police officer is about helping kids with poor mental health. 

Why?

Because the cops get called in the case of a suicidal teen instead of a health professional. 

Like, i’ve seen people mad it wasn’t addressed, and okay, they never verbally hash this one out, but personally i found the development quite explainable without talking about it.

Yaz is ‘saved’ by a police officer her sister had to call out of lack of other options for help. After she’s a bit better yaz decides she wants to help people and do good like the establishment who saved her does. Yaz thinks cops are actively for what that woman did for her and Yaz wants to pay it forward. Yaz becomes a cop. Yaz is deeply unsatisfied with the job well before she even gets out of her probationary period because she was dissilusioned. Yaz meets the doctor who actually lets her help people. Yaz is only shown from here on trying to dodge her work as a cop and never returns. 

Yaz was given the impression that cops are here to be mental health advocates from one single cop who was kind to her at the time when she needed it most. Yaz learns very quickly that that’s not what cops do. Yaz wants to actually help people. Had Yaz been sent somebody Properly trained in mental health like she should have been, she’d never have ended up a cop bc she didn’t actually want to be one. She just didn’t learn that till after she was one. 

TLDR If you ask the question ‘why are cops responding to worried kids calling about their suicidally depressed sisters instead of a trained medical professional?’ I think this whole thing is very self evident as an arc. 

Cops should not be called for a mental health problem. Cops being trained to respond to mental health calls when instead they could take the money they used to teach cops this stuff and give it to Actual Mental Health Establishments is a farce. 

I think by the end of her run, Yaz is aware, maybe not of the mental health angle, she’s equally averse to introspection as 13, but is definitely of the opinion that cop work isn’t primarily out to help people.