107 a Day campaign launches: critical NI mental health crisis
The 107 a Day campaign launches today
One number Northern Ireland’s mental health policy debate has been leaving out.
By Karl Bennett, JustMental
The 107 a Day campaign is JustMental’s first dedicated public campaign. It launches today. 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 the 107 a Day campaign means by 107
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.
Yesterday, the supply-side companion
Yesterday, JustMental published an editorial response to the Royal College of Psychiatrists in NI’s new workforce survey. The headline figure: 72% of Northern Ireland’s psychiatry workforce are considering leaving their current role. From 2007 to May 2025, NI did not add a single new psychiatry training place. England added 417 in the same period.
Yesterday’s piece named the supply side of NI’s mental health crisis, the workforce leaving the system. Today’s 107 a Day campaign names the demand side, the crisis the system cannot absorb, being absorbed by policing instead.
Both numbers describe the same broken system from different angles. The crisis the police are absorbing is the crisis the psychiatrists are leaving. The pressure displaces both ways. The cost of giving up is borne by the people in the middle.
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, 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.
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 clinical training. It is not a sustainable arrangement for the Northern Ireland mental health budget, which is in effect paying twice.
What the 107 a Day campaign is calling for
The 107 a Day campaign is built around three specific demands, all of which can be measured and tracked:
- A 24/7 multidisciplinary mental health crisis response across all five HSC Trusts, costed and committed to a delivery timeline. People in mental health crisis should be met by a clinician, not by 999.
- Publication of the 107-a-day figure quarterly by PSNI and the Department of Health jointly. The figure currently lives in evidence to a committee. It should live in a published quarterly dashboard. Falling numbers will tell us what is working.
- The Mental Health Strategy 2021–2031 funded to its stated requirement of £76.7 million annually, not the £15.5 million it currently receives. The same demand sits at the centre of yesterday’s RCPsych piece. It is the demand that funds the solution.
What happens next
From today onwards, expect:
- Coordinated social rollout across all platforms this week and beyond.
- Outreach to MLAs, ministers, and the relevant Stormont Health and Justice committees, starting this week.
- Ongoing reporting from JustMental as the figure moves, up, down, or sideways.
- Companion reporting on the supply-side picture as new data emerges.
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.
This is not wellness. This is war against stigma.
