107 a day campaign reveal graphic from JustMental News. Black tile with red strips top and bottom. Eyebrow text reads: “JustMental Campaign · The Reveal.” Massive red display: 107, set against a subtle halftone dot pattern that radiates outward. Below in white: “A DAY.” Italic line: “In Northern Ireland.” Red outlined box containing the kicker: “The number you’ve been waiting for.” Body text: 107 PSNI concern-for-safety calls every single day in Northern Ireland. Mental health crises landing on policing, not health services. Red footer strip: “Launches next week.”
06/24/2026

107 a Day campaign: NI’s hidden 2024 mental health crisis

The 107 a Day campaign begins

Five weeks of teasing. One number. A figure Northern Ireland’s mental health system would rather not name out loud.

By Karl Bennett, JustMental

The 107 a Day campaign is JustMental’s first dedicated public campaign. It begins with a single number that Northern Ireland’s official mental health conversation tends to leave out.

107.

That is the number of concern-for-safety calls the Police Service of Northern Ireland receives every single day. Almost 39,000 calls a year. At an estimated annual cost in policing time alone of around £4 million.

Source: ACC Ryan Henderson, in evidence to the Stormont Health and Justice committees, November 2024.

What 107 actually means

A concern-for-safety call is the call you make when you are worried for somebody’s life. Often the person making the call has no other number to ring. Often the person they are worried about is in acute mental distress. Often the person making the call is a parent, a partner, a sibling, a neighbour, or, sometimes, the person in distress themselves.

The call goes to 999. The 999 operator routes it to police. Police officers attend. The vast majority of these calls are not crimes. They are mental health crises being absorbed by the wrong service.

In the language of public policy this is called “demand displacement.” In the language of someone who has actually made one of these calls, it is called the only number left to ring.

Why the 107 a Day campaign exists

Because the official conversation about Northern Ireland mental health services tends to focus on waiting lists, budgets, and workforce census numbers. All real. All important. None of them name the bit of the system that is actually absorbing the overflow right now, which is policing.

The 107 a Day campaign is built to put that bit of the system into the conversation. To name it as a structural problem rather than a daily resourcing question. And to put the question to the people responsible for fixing it: why is this number not falling, and what specifically are you going to do about it.

The figure, in context

The 39,000 annual figure works out to:

  • One concern-for-safety call every 13 minutes, every day, year-round.
  • A workload absorbing the equivalent of roughly 60 full-time police officers’ working hours annually, on a single category of incident that those officers are not clinically trained to respond to.
  • An annual policing-time cost, by ACC Henderson’s own estimate to the committee, of around £4 million.

The figure is self-reported by PSNI. We caveat that openly: it has not been independently audited. But the source is on record at Stormont, in front of two committees, in November 2024. Anyone who wants to verify the figure can.

What the 107 a Day campaign says, in plain terms

The system Northern Ireland built to respond to mental health crisis is, in practice, the same system Northern Ireland built to respond to crime. Officers in body armour are turning up to people who need a clinician.

That is not a criticism of PSNI. It is a description of what happens when a mental health system cannot absorb its own demand. The pressure displaces. The next service in the queue absorbs the overflow. In Northern Ireland, that next service is policing.

This is not a sustainable arrangement for the people in crisis. It is not a sustainable arrangement for the families calling 999. It is not a sustainable arrangement for police officers asked to do clinical work without the clinical training. It is not a sustainable arrangement for the Northern Ireland mental health budget, which is in effect paying twice, once for the crisis service that did not absorb the call, and once for the policing service that did.

What happens next with the 107 a Day campaign

The campaign launches in full next week (the week of 30 June 2026). From that point, expect:

  • A dedicated 107 a Day campaign landing page on justmental.net.
  • Coordinated social rollout across all platforms.
  • Outreach to MLAs, ministers, and the relevant Stormont Health and Justice committees.
  • Ongoing reporting from JustMentalNews as the figure moves, up, down, or sideways.

For Northern Ireland

The 107 a Day figure is a Northern Ireland figure. Generated here. Absorbed here. Costing here.

The conversation about Northern Ireland mental health services has been going on for years. It tends to circle the same questions: budgets, beds, staff. The 107 a Day campaign is built to add the question that everyone in the system already knows the answer to but does not say out loud, what happens to the people the system cannot reach in time?

If you or someone you know is in mental health crisis right now

Lifeline NI: 0808 808 8000 (free, confidential, 24/7).

Samaritans: 116 123 (free, 24/7).

CALM: 0800 58 58 58 (5pm to midnight, every day) — specifically for men.

Childline: 0800 1111 (for under-19s).

In immediate danger: 999.

If you have made a concern-for-safety call yourself and need to talk about that experience, Lifeline NI and Samaritans are appropriate first contacts.