Eesh I'm a little scared to wade in here as a psychiatrist but this popped up on my feed and I suppose I feel a need to reply !

You're right r.e. 136 for if outside of their property as several others have said. 135 would have been appropriate probably, it's for the AMHP to apply for a warrant from a judge. This can be done relatively quickly but it depends. Usually you'd try to go in and assess first if felt safe to do so. Sorry if I missed it, but was the patient definitely not letting people in to assess ? I would have thought crisis team would call for a mental health act assessment if they did let people in. That would then be the AMHP + 2 section 12 approved doctors usually and it can generally be arranged and completed quickly when it's obvious the patient is so unwell and at risk / risky. There are always frustrating grey areas however and I appreciate that.

Mental capacity act can also seem quite grey and it's not as simple as only for physical health stuff as some have said. The MCA sets out a 2-stage test of capacity: 1) Does the person have an impairment of their mind or brain, whether as a result of an illness, or external factors such as alcohol or drug use? 2) Does the impairment mean the person is unable to make a specific decision when they need to? Sounds like probably yes for these here. So could argue (I think) that the team could act in their best interest by treating or keeping safe in some form, but it would need to be the least restrictive thing and proportionate to the situation, so very tricky with things like restraint and I agree that generally the mental health act is more appropriate where they're mentally ill and refusing treatment. But there are often cases where you could argue either.

My last thing is, please can people be a little more open minded about mental health services ! It's not as simple as we're all shit and lazy, and I'd like to think the police of all people could understand how much it sucks to hear such negativity so often about your colleagues. We're severely underfunded and overwhelmed, particularly since the pandemic (but also before..) Like any profession there's good and bad staff but from my experience of doing a lot of mental health act assessments, the AMHPs in particular are run ragged. Trying to prioritise between 5 assessments that have all been requested at once in geographically different areas, organise the doctors and/ or police to attend etc. And as you know the assessments themselves can be quite scary, or emotional and stressful. I've really appreciated the police support when needed, but sometimes they have also been too busy to attend or have refused, leaving us in a difficult and potentially unsafe situation. Most of us go into this because we care and are doing the best we can. Like many I'll always agree to an assessment 3am or whatever, if it needs doing. Often it gets turned down outside of our control or because there is literally no where to take that patient even if we did assess (like no beds in the country or local 136 suites are full.)

OP - Good to bring up a complicated but fairly common situation, thanks for asking about it.