Feburary 13, 2019 — Local law enforcement officers are attending a three-day training to de-escalate mental health crises this week.
Law enforcement officers across the country act as de facto mental health responders, often showing up at the scene of a crisis at its most potentially disastrous moment. In Mendocino County, behavioral health and recovery workers and members of the Behavioral Health Advisory Board have long championed Crisis Intervention Training to teach officers some techniques for calming things down. It’s part of the Stepping Up Initiativeto create data-driven, systems-level changes to bring down the number of mental health patients in jails.
We’ll hear from trainer Dr. Joel Fay about the main tenets of the program, which include de-escalation and negotiation. We’ll also hear from a member of one of our local Mobile Outreach and Prevention teams, which specialize in negotiating with mental health clients and the people and systems involved with their lives. And we’ll get an impression of the training from a member of the Behavioral Health Advisory Board.