Training helps police handle mentally ill

The statistics regarding mental illness tell the devastating story:

One in 17 Americans lives with a serious mental illness, and one in four adults or 57.7 million Americans experience a mental health disorder in a given year.

Four of the 10 leading causes of disability in the U.S. and other developed countries are mental disorders.

Helping persons with mental disorders is a challenging process. Mental illness can alter a family dynamic; it can change how people interact; it can be confusing for people to understand those who are sick and situations can get violent.

Yet, it is very difficult to commit someone to a mental health institution and many individuals go unmonitored.

Even if they are treated, problems arise. They can stop taking their medication. They can become homeless because the illness has overtaken their life. They can get in fights with family members or others.

When this happens, police are summoned.

Not all police officers, however, are properly trained to deal with situations involving a mentally ill person. And not knowing how to handle a mentally ill person can have major consequences for all involved, including the officer.

"What surprises me is most officers who have been around 10, 15, 20 years have very little training (in working with mentally ill people)," said Mary Madden, who has worked in the mental health field for 25 years and is the current executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) of Waukesha County.

Madden, NAMI and others in the police force around the county are looking to change that. This starts with Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) training for law enforcement.

Training comes to Waukesha

A "suburban departments" training session, that was started at the Milwaukee County Sheriff's Department, has shifted to NAMI Waukesha, whose members have been trained and hosted training programs for officers in Waukesha County in the last year.

Menomonee Falls Police Chief Anna Ruzinski was instrumental in bringing CIT training to Waukesha.

She has been an advocate for CIT training for years dating back to when she was with the Milwaukee Police Department. She started training there and when she came to Waukesha County in 2007, she connected with NAMI and other agencies here.

"I've been passionate about this for some time," Ruzinski said. "We needed to change the system and look for ways to handle mental illness."

Waukesha NAMI ran its first two CIT classes, which are held at the Waukesha County Mental Health Center, in 2011 and Madden said there are three scheduled for 2012 with the first being next week. When that class is finished, 20 of Ruzinski's 43 officers will be CIT trained. More than a dozen officers in the Waukesha County Sheriff's Department are also trained.

The program, coordinated by Waukesha County Deputy Kim Unger and Madden, is a 40-hour, weeklong class that helps law enforcement officers and other first responders recognize and understand the signs of mental illness including depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, anxiety disorders, or other development and cognitive disorders and dementia.

Building a bridge

Objectives include learning how to properly de-escalate the mental health consumer in crisis, about resources in the community that are available to the mental health consumer and their families and how interacting in outreach programs reduces the potential for crisis and/or injury of the officer, consumer or others.

"It's very intense for everybody," Madden said. "But it's really designed to be a bridge between mental health and law enforcement and to find a better way to work with people so they don't end up in jail for petty crimes or so it doesn't get escalated inadvertently."

Ruzinski said everyone learns something from the class, which is funded through national grant money.

"I think there was a certain frustration," Ruzinski said of her officers who dealt with mentally ill people before they received training. "When you have a mental crisis and the person isn't listening to you and then they turn up their music higher, you, as the officer, might think they are ignoring you or just trying to make you mad, but now the officers realize these people could be drowning out the voices in their head."

Serving the mentally ill

In addition to Ruzinski's department, officers in the Mukwonago, Village of North Prairie, Village of Eagle, Oconomowoc, New Berlin, Brookfield and Waukesha Police Departments have followed suit in getting trained. Overall, 1,000 officers from 55 agencies across the state are now trained.

"That's excellent and it's only going to increase," said Oconomowoc Police Department Sgt. Brad Timm, who became CIT certified last September.

Sgt. Chad Pergande of the Waukesha Police Department joined Timm in that class, which involved key stakeholders from the mental health services community speaking to the group. One speaker, who suffers from a mental illness, told the class about his struggle with schizophrenia and how it affects his life.

"As police officers, we often do not have the luxury of learning how a person's mental illness has affected their lives," said Pergande, who added a large section of the class was dedicated to suicide prevention as well as information about how mental health problems affect adolescents, the elderly and veterans of war.

The class also took a tour of outreach organizations in the City of Waukesha that provide services to those suffering from mental illness and saw homeless shelters and mental health institutions serve mentally ill people.

"I have been a police officer for almost 10 years and did not realize that some of these programs existed," Pergande said. "The fact that they took us to the various locations has made a real impact on how I perceive these organizations' ability to provide services."

Walking in their shoes

Students in Pergande and Timm's class also wore tape recorders that simulated what an individual might hear if you were schizophrenic and hearing voices.

"The point of the instruction was to see how devastating this disorder can be for those suffering from it and how it can affect everything from mood to the ability to recall information," Pergande said. "It was an eye-opening experience to walk in the steps of someone with schizophrenia, but as they reminded us, we were fortunate enough to be able to turn it off when it got uncomfortable."

In another exercise, officers worked through various situations with actors who presented signs and symptoms of mental illness.

While both officers said they will make an arrest if warranted, the CIT training has helped them learn better techniques when handling a mentally ill individual and to seek options other than jail.

Confident in a crisis

In fact, CIT officers are 25 percent more likely to transport an individual to a psychiatric treatment facility than other officers.

"Part of the issue across the country is that our jails have more people with mental illness and that's not saying that someone who committed a crime, whether they are mentally ill or not doesn't belong in jail," Madden said. "But there are situations where individuals get called on disorderly conduct and the situation just escalates because the person is ill and remains in jail and doesn't get appropriate treatment and they could then create more problems."

So far, the reactions from individuals who have worked with a CIT officer have been well received.

"We've gotten a lot of feedback and we hear from the families who deal with a CIT officer and say they can't believe how wonderful the officer is in dealing with the situation," Madden said. "The officers also feel much more confident in dealing with a crisis."

While this is a first step and could be beneficial for all officers to know, not every police officer is getting trained - partly because some local departments don't want to pull officers away from their job for a week.

"Nobody gets forced to be trained, but the ones who do, often go back and spread the word," said Madden. "So we're hoping it's a trickle-down effect."

This was the case in Ruzinski's department.

"I think some of the officers were skeptical at first, but were very impressed with it that some even put on a presentation for those who didn't go," Ruzinski said.

Two other officers from Timm's department joined him at the program last year. After seeing the benefits it provides, he wants to see more attend this year's sessions.

NAMI reports that by 2020, major depressive illness will be the leading cause of disability in the world for women and children. Also complicating the issue are the deep cuts in public funding meaning more people with mental illness could be left untreated and encounter legal problems.

“I told my chief that this was the most educated class that I’ve ever gone through,” said Timm, who has been with the OPD for 13 years. “I’ve felt much better after the class and the three officers that went are also stressing to our chief that it makes sense to send more officers because (if mental illness increases) it’s going to be good to have more officers educated.

“It’s a wonderful class and probably the top two or three I ever attended. I learned a lot about resources that are available and how to relate to mentally ill people and try to better understand what they’re going through.”

It’s good that he has, because Timm has come across people with mental illness since that class quite regularly. 

“It’s more common than you think,” said Timm, who added he feels more confident in this situation. “We see it quite frequently on a monthly basis. An average on my shift of five to 10 emergency attentions a month.

“Now to have more experience on how to handle it in talking to the family and giving them resources and to put them in situations where they can help, whether it is through counseling or a different session. We want to educate the family and try as much to de-escalate the situation.”

Pergande and Officer Niki Nelson are the only two CIT trained officers within Waukesha's Police Department. But Pergande did note that the WPD has a Critical Incident Stress Management Team consisting of officers and detectives on all three shifts who have received specialized training in helping people deal with critical incidents and other forms of stress management.

Waukesha County's NAMI - a nonprofit organization started in 1982 with a main purpose to provide help to those affected by mental illness - also aims at helping the families who have mentally ill relatives.

"We hope to share the hope of recovery for individuals and families affected by mental illness and hope to help the families," Madden said. "We're here for them to know that they're not alone."

NAMI has accomplished a lot in 30 years, but according to Madden, its No. 1 accomplishment is forming that bond with the local police departments to offer CIT training.

"I honestly think the CIT training is the most important thing we're doing at our organization."

FYI

What: NAMI Waukesha Inc.

Where: 217 Wisconsin Ave. Suite #411

Contact: (262) 524-8886

2012 CIT Training Sessions: Jan. 23 to 27, April 23 to 27 and one in September

NAMI programs:

Family-Family classes - Saturdays through March 31, St. Francis Episcopal Church, Menomonee Falls; Mondays starting at the end of February, Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Menomonee Falls

Family Support Groups - every second Wednesday at the NAMI offices in Waukesha as well as every fourth Wednesday at the Waukesha County Mental Health Center.

Peer Groups for individuals with mental illness - first and third Thursday of every month at the NAMI offices and at the Mental Health Center every fourth Wednesday of every month.

Educational meeting at 7:30 p.m. Jan. 25 at the Waukesha County Mental Health Center after the 6:30 p.m. support groups. Kim Wells, a yoga instructor, will address mental illness from a holistic approach.

NAMI also helps assist individuals who are homeless and suffering from mental illness find affordable and permanent housing.

The history behind CIT Training

Crisis Intervention Team training was started in 1988 when the Memphis Police Department partnered with the Memphis Chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, mental health providers and two local universities (the University of Memphis and the University of Tennessee) in organizing, training and implementing a specialized unit.

This alliance was formed to develop a more intelligent, understandable and safe approach to handling events during a crises involving mentally ill persons.

The MPD began this model after the shooting by a police officer of a man with a serious mental illness.

After that incident, officers said they felt at a disadvantage and that traditional police methods, misinformation and a lack of sensitivity caused fear and frustration for the mentally ill subjects and their families. Thus, the “Memphis Model” was formed and all its officers have become trained on how to deal with such circumstances through specialized training and community collaboration.

This model has since come to Wisconsin, including Waukesha County.
The first police department to implement it in Wisconsin was Appleton in June 2004.

Their efforts spilled out to the rest of the state. In January 2006, the Milwaukee Police Department held its first CIT training session, graduating 39 officers.