Barriers and facilitators to implementing an urban co-responding police-mental health team.

The current study provides a critical foundation for the implementation of first-responder police-mental health co-response teams. Cultural and systematic barriers to co-response team success should be understood prior to program creation and used to guide implementation. Furthermore, attention must be directed to cultivating community and professional support for co-response teams. Findings from this study can be used to guide future efforts to implement first-response co-response teams in order to positively engage PMI and divert PMI from the criminal justice system.