I don't know the figures but I'd imagine (guess) that somewhere in the region of 10% of Mispers are found by Air support? Most don't intend self harm but a few do...
I would argue the 10% figure..??
Certainly in my force area the control room is handling between 1 and 20 incidents PER DAY, whereby someone is threatening "self harm".
As an ASU we get involved in varying proportions depending on who the incident manager is at the force control room. At the moment we arent allowed to say no them.
All i will say is, barring the odd exception, we find very, very few, of the ones we lift for.
If we were allowed advise on the ones we lifted for, then that figure would rise massively.
However time and time again, force incident managers take NO notice of our advise as to the suitability of the task, and the result is hours and hours of wasted flights.
(any none police readers on here may well think us somewhat brutal with this and say "well just go and look anyway, just in case".
However... ask anyone in the policing world and they will always tell you that the ones that you worry about are the ones that just go away and do it. They dont ring up constantly giving "clues" where they are, or make demands about seeing ex girlfriends, etc etc.
The sad fact is that if someone is determined to take their own life, a lot of the time you just cant stop them, or find them, if theyre serious about it)