Abstract
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>While the subject of policing and mental illness has been widely written about, little attention has been paid to how police make meaning around mental illness. Meanings are made in the social response to actions. Police responses to people with mental illness have contributed to stigmatic assumptions that link mental illness to risk and danger. In recent years, increased attention has been paid to concerns over police officers’ mental health, thus exposing a fundamental tension that exists in modern policing. The police are tasked with responding to people with mental illness while they simultaneously acknowledge mental illness among their ranks. This paper examines the framing and discourse associated with this contradiction in news media reports over an eleven-year period. Using qualitative media analysis, the authors collected and analyzed 592 articles. The authors identified 87 articles in which police representatives speak to the media about police mental health and 49 articles of police representatives speaking about policing mentally ill persons in the community. The authors’ analysis finds similarities and contradictions in how police representatives frame mental illness among officers as compared to civilians. The authors find that stigmatic assumptions that link mental illness to risk and danger legitimize police as responders to mental health crises, but these stigmatic assumptions must be distanced when police discuss their own mental health. The contradiction between policing the mentally ill and mentally ill officers remains unresolved and complicates institutional police efforts to destigmatize and address mental health concerns among its ranks in any meaningful way.</jats:p>