SVU tackles mental health perfectly

When viewers think of police procedurals like Chicago Police And Law and order, the first thing they think of is not mental health. Although shows have changed over time, many police procedurals aim to highlight — and elevate — police, who struggle to deal with mental health issues in the real world. This season, two of Dick Wolf’s police procedurals appear to be trying to change the conversation.

Dick Wolf’s procedural shows have a history of changing the conversation around difficult topics. Law & Order: SVU, for example, has had a huge impact on the cultural debate around sexual assault, sexual violence and child abuse. NOW Law & Order: SVU And Chicago Police are taking over and using the cultural zeitgeist to stimulate debate about how police forces deal with mental health, both within their ranks and with civilians.

Chicago Police Push Upton to the Brink

• Season 11 will be the sixth and final season of Chicago Police for Tracy Spiridakos, who plays Hailey Upton.

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During the premiere of Chicago Police, Season 11, Episode 1, “Unpacking,” Detective Hailey Upton (Tracy Spiridakos) shadows a crisis task force for the day. Their first call involves a man experiencing a mental health crisis while trying to enter a locked building. Despite being told to stay back, Upton lets his instincts take over and at that point determines that the man poses a danger, eventually attempting to handcuff him and then falling through a glass door when he resists . When the man was in custody, Upton discovered two people in an apartment in the building the man was trying to enter; one of them is dead and the other is injured.

Upton’s instincts told him that the man experiencing a mental health crisis was responsible for the murder and attempted murder of these two people, but his instincts were wrong. The episode showed the nuance of trying to understand whether someone experiencing a mental health crisis is actually dangerous and how complicated it can seem to understand what someone experiencing a mental health crisis might have need. What Upton learned is that for anyone, especially police, to appropriately serve someone facing a mental health crisis, one must be patient and evaluate carefully before taking action. When Upton realizes she misread the situation, her mental health takes a hit, but Upton isn’t the only member of the intelligence team to deal with mental health issues over the course of season 11.

Adam Ruzek (Patrick John Flueger), who has recovered from the gunshot wound he received in Season 10 Episode 22, “A Better Place”, begins Season 11 still waiting to return to the police, and the public sees the toll it has taken. about his mental health in “Unpacking” and in season 11, episode 2, “Retread”, which has a central focus on Ruzek. Kim Burgess (Marina Squerciati) is also affected by Ruzek’s delayed return to the CPD, as seen in “Retread” and in Season 11, Episode 3, “Safe Harbor”, although at the end of “Safe Harbor” “, Burgess and Ruzek realize that it is their relationship that ultimately grounds them both. While Chicago Police has referenced mental health in previous seasons, opening season 11 with each member of the team dealing with their own issues and having an episode focused on the CPD’s response to civilians facing mental health crises is an important step in advancing the conversation about mental health and moving the criminal justice system forward.

Law & Order: SVU looks at EMDR

• Law & Order: SVU is currently in its 25th season. It is the longest-running primetime television drama in history, and Olivia Benson is the longest-running live-action television character of all time.

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Law & Order: SVU has never shied away from the idea that police officers need mental health support. While early seasons contained the narrative that police officers who needed psychological support were weak or unfit, over the past 25 seasons the series has changed its own rhetoric. In Season 21, Episode 12, “The Longest Night of Rain”, after a police officer commits suicide in front of a retirement party, Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay) brings in Dr. Peter Lindstrom (Bill Irwin) to speak to his team. A major element of the episode is that too many police officers are committing suicide, and when Benson introduces her team to Dr. Lindstrom, she makes a point of telling the room, “We know it’s a stigma, but the Department policies have changed, thank goodness, and asking for help is no longer a sign of weakness.”

Over the first four episodes of season 25, audiences saw Olivia Benson struggle with the kidnapping of a teenage girl, Maddie, who Benson spotted in the passenger seat of her captor’s van. Benson and his team didn’t yet know that Maddie had been kidnapped, but Olivia continues to blame herself for not knowing that Maddie had been kidnapped just by looking at her. Although Olivia has always cared about missing children, this particular case had a significant – and surprising – impact on her mental health. At the end of Season 25, Episode 3, “The Punch List”, Benson undergoes EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) therapy for the first time. This therapeutic technique uses specific eye movements to help patients process traumatic memories differently, and Season 25 Episode 4, “Duty to Report,” shows Olivia’s desire to resolve some of the issues she’s dealing with for a long time while also introducing the EMDR process itself. .

Olivia Benson is no stranger to difficult cases or cases that drag on. In Season 20, Episode 14, “Part 33”, Benson shares with Rollins that she is still dealing with the trauma of her two kidnappings by the same man, William Lewis, in Season 15. It is not unusual that the trauma persists, and although Olivia has been in therapy since she first escaped from Lewis, she admits to the EMDR therapist that there are things she continues to hold on to and why Talk therapy doesn’t seem to help. Seeing both Benson’s previous talk therapy and his new venture into EMDR is valuable to the conversation about mental health, not just for police officers but for people in general. Every time someone on TV or in a movie talks about mental health or shows themselves undergoing mental health care, it removes the stigma that remains. Olivia Benson’s journey over the last 25 seasons has often inspired others to confront their own experiences of sexual assault or deal with their own mental health issues, and there’s no reason why her foray into EMDR couldn’t do the same.

Mental health remains a major issue for the police

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Police procedures are not perfect. In fact, they are far from it. Promoting the police as inherently good or intrinsically bad can be simplistic and dangerous. Given the complexity of the criminal justice system in the United States, the racist history of the police force, and the discrimination against people with mental health problems by the police – and the public – it can be complicated for a police procedural to deal with every problem. nuance. That’s why it’s so important at shows like Law & Order: SVU And Chicago Police making it a point to tackle a problem facing real-world police.

On February 8, 2024, appearance on Tonight’s show, Mariska Hargitay discussed Olivia Benson’s healing arc and the importance of the role she will play in the 25th season of SVU. This change in the overall story of SVU is valuable. The more shows with cultural gravitas, like Law & Order: SVU And Chicago Police, or any other Dick Wolf show, talks about topics like mental health, the sooner the stigma disappears. What will be most interesting to see over the next few weeks is how both shows continue to address not only the mental health of police officers, but also how the police officers on these shows communicate with the civilians, regardless of the type of mental health crisis they may be experiencing. that you live in or how dangerous they may seem.

Chicago Police

Next comes District 21 of the Chicago Police Department, made up of two different groups: the uniformed cops and the intelligence unit.

Release date

January 8, 2014

Creator

Dick Wold and Matt Olmstead

Cast

Jason Beghe, Marina Squerciati, LaRoyce Hawkins, Patrick Flueger, Tracy Spiridakos, Benjamin Levy Aguilar

Seasons

11