Officers Learn Innovative Approaches for Working with Persons with Mental Illness

9/29/2005

 

A law enforcement officer is dispatched to a call where a 14 year old has assaulted her mother. The teenager, diagnosed with bipolar disorder, has damaged the interior of the house. Her parents are afraid of her and need assistance dealing with their daughter. How does the law enforcement officer respond?

A law enforcement officer is dispatched to a call where an elderly male, about 60 years old, is standing in traffic waving his arms, swearing, and throwing rocks at passing cars. He is also delusional. How does the law enforcement officer respond?

For the past week, officers from the Cary Police Department, the Raleigh Police Department, and the Wake County Sheriff's Office have learned innovative approaches to mentally ill crisis events like the above. How do officers balance the public's safety and their safety with the safety of citizens who are in crisis and need specialized responses?

Based on the "Memphis Model" for Crisis Intervention Teams (CIT), law enforcement officers are learning creative ways to work with mental health consumers. In addition to the law enforcement agencies, the North Carolina Division of Mental Health/Developmental Disabilities/Substance Abuse Services, Wake County Human Services, Area Services and Providers, Inc., Consumer Family Advisory Committee (CFAC) and NAMI-Wake County (National Alliance for the Mentally Ill) have formed a strong core partnership to bring this training to Wake County.

The 22 Crisis Intervention Officers who graduate on Friday will have learned about mental health and conflict resolution. They have studied such topics as the various mental illnesses, developmental disabilities, substance abuse, psychotropic medications and side effects, special concerns with adolescents, suicide risk assessment and intervention, and use of force vs. de-escalation.

In addition to classroom studies and role playing, officers have visited various day treatment centers, club homes for consumers, the Healing Place as well as Dorothea Dix Hospital. During these visits, officers and mental health consumers sat down together, shared lunch and their experiences. These sessions proved invaluable to both groups as they learned "the other person's side of the story."

With Crisis Intervention Team officers in place, advocates for CIT hope that responses to these events will be immediate and that consumers will receive appropriate assistance and medication. Hopefully, Wake County will also see a decrease in arrests, in consumer violence, in officer injury as well as liability for health care issues in the jail.

But the CIT partnership needs the community's help. They encourage the citizens of Wake County to join them to help improve the consumer's quality of life. For more information about the Crisis Intervention Team contact Chris Wassmuth, Human Services CIT Coordinator, 919.212.7528 or the local NAMI chapter.

The first Wake County CIT Graduation will be :
Friday, September 30, 2005, 4:00 p.m.
Western Campus (Mill Pond Village)
of Wake Technical Community College,
3434 Kildaire Farm Road, Cary, NC

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