Nobody threatens to jump off a bridge - or roams onto a motorway in rush hour - unless they are desperate.
But twice in the space of a week, extraordinary cases have emerged in which Greater Manchester Police have charged people with criminal offences for doing just that.
Last Wednesday, we reported how a grieving teenager was charged with ‘causing a public nuisance’ after standing on a ledge over the M602 and threatening to jump, declaring that her life ‘isn’t worth living’.
The 18-year-old, who had just lost her mum and had been self-harming, was berated by magistrates for causing ‘a massive inconvenience’ after her desperate actions closed the road for 20 minutes.
Her story prompted outrage from mental health campaigners and M.E.N. readers alike.
Yet within days, another troublingly similar case has come to light, in which a 27-year-old woman - who had disappeared from the Meadowbrook psychiatric unit in Salford after a row over her medication - wandered out into traffic on the same motorway earlier this year.
Police charged her with the rarely-used offence of being ‘excluded traffic’ on a motorway. This morning she was convicted of exactly that, before being taken back to the same unit.
The court heard, in her defence, that while she had 'caused cars using the motorway to slow down', she hadn't put anyone else in danger.
For the second time in a week, the mental health charity Mind has registered its alarm over the decision to charge.
Stuart Lucas, of the charity’s Manchester branch, said: “Whilst we understand that the police are sometimes placed in stressful situations, a person who is obviously struggling with aspects of their mental health should be treated with understanding, patience and dignity, and not criminalised."
In each of the two cases, the vulnerable women in question had repeatedly been discovered by officers in a similar part of the M602.
Yet rather than that being taken as a sign of the severity of their mental health crises, they were prosecuted.
In the first case, following which the woman was admitted as an inpatient and has since lost both her grandmother and her uncle, the magistrates bench seemed to view her more as a nuisance than someone consumed by tragedy.
"This has caused a massive inconvenience to the public and no-one wants to be subject to this sort of inconvenience," she was told.
"You must move forward with your life. This sort of behaviour doesn’t cause anyone any good, least of all you.”
Last week was, ironically, mental health awareness week.
Lisa Barnes, who founded Bridge The Gap, an initiative that seeks to stop people taking their own lives by placing messages on bridges, said in response: "In a world where mental health is at its highest we treat people like inconveniences. People need support, care, love, compassion and respect - not treating like they are a problem to society."
The two cases have emerged at the same time as the police inspectorate criticised GMP in its latest report for the way it protects vulnerable people, although it did note that since last summer, NHS workers had been embedded into a new unit that is meant to triage any incidents involving people with mental illness.
A spokesman for GMP said: “Supporting those most vulnerable is a priority for Greater Manchester Police. We work closely with our partners to ensure people with mental health conditions are assisted in the most appropriate way and pointed in the direction of services that can give them the help they need most.
“Sadly, it is an ever more regular occurrence for suicide threats on the motorway network, often involving the same individual on the same bridge on multiple occasions.
“Every incident is treated on a case by case basis and a prosecution is rarely a course of action for someone with a mental health condition. We speak to our colleagues in the mental health triage service and take their guidance before we decide on the most appropriate action.
“If a prosecution has been sought the likelihood is that there have been several incidents prior which we have attended and taken a different course of action.
“We will of course review these cases and ensure that the correct decision was made.”
Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust, which runs Meadowbrook, declined to comment.
We asked Beverley Hughes, who oversees crime on behalf of mayor Andy Burnham, whether she would be seeking a change of police procedure in the light of the latest incidents.
Ms Hughes, deputy mayor for policing and crime, said: “Clearly the first priority for people with serious mental health problems is that they get access to the support they need and prosecution should only be used where it is legally and ethically justified.
“I have received assurances from GMP that the prosecution of a person with serious mental health problems, which is a matter for the police, is in the majority of cases only used as a last resort.
“Of course, it remains the case that not only the police but also all our community services, including mental health services, are completely overstretched after a decade of sustained government austerity.
“Police officers at the frontline, faced with these very challenging situations, have in the end to protect both the person concerned and the wider public from dangerous behaviour, whatever the reason behind it.
"They deserve our support.”
