Crisis Intervention Paper

Words: 1684
Pages: 7

Crisis intervention teams have become a large part of policing over the past 30 years. These teams work with mental health programs to help those with mental illnesses who are experiencing a crisis. They are specially trained to help in a crisis since many times officers are the first responders for those experiencing a mental illness crisis. When officers are not trained to handle these situations, it can cause problems because those with mental illnesses can come across as belligerent, violent, and uncooperative at times. This paper will explore relevant mental health statistics and give an example of a situation with a man who was mentally ill that went wrong. Then, some background information will be given along with what is involved in …show more content…
Harrison’s mother had called the police for help because Harrison, who suffered from bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, was in the middle of a crisis. When the police arrived, Harrison was fidgeting with a screwdriver behind his mother. The officers then proceeded to yell at Harrison to drop the tool, which frightened him and within seconds he was shot and killed (Skinner, 2015). This is just one example of many, although some do end up being suicide by cop, where the person with a mental illness intentionally makes threatening actions in order to get shot. The goal of crisis intervention teams is to prevent events like this from …show more content…
These officers are intensively trained about mental health and work with local mental health programs to provide safe responses to mental health calls (Teller et al., 2006). Some other states, including Texas, where a Senate Bill called The Bob Meadours Act, led to all Texas Peace officers to have sixteen hours of mandated crisis intervention training. While in California, Senate Bills have increased academy mental health training hours to fifteen and now require field training officers to have up to forty hours of additional training for some higher-level positions. Finally, New Mexico now requires forty hours of training in crisis management in their basic law enforcement training class curriculum (Dempsey, 2017). In training, an officer will be taught about different mental illnesses, including their signs and symptoms, medications, involuntary treatment, and community resources. They will learn how to communicate effectively using de-escalation techniques and role play how to use them in different scenarios. Additionally, officers will hear from different mental health professionals and people with experience living with mental illnesses, and the National Alliance on Mental Illness frequently joins these trainings (Ellis,