Police learning how to handle mentally ill

The statistics regarding mental illness tell the devastating but real 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 people with mental disorders is a challenging process. Mental illness can alter a family dynamic; it can change how people interact with others; 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 medications. They can become homeless because the illness has overtaken their lives. 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 men tally 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 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 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 the area. She has been an advocate for CIT training 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 better 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 held this 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.

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

"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.

"Now the officer learns how to better understand that person."

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.

Sgt. John Thomae of the Menomonee Falls Police Department as well as Sgt. Chad Pergande of the Waukesha Police Department took CIT training in September, which involved key stakeholders from the mental health services community speaking to the group.

For Thomae, he had nothing but praise for the class.

"The training was great," said Thomae, who wants all his fellow officers to get trained in the coming years. "It was very thorough and gave me a different perspective. It makes you consider all the resources that are available out there to consider and to put the person in the best place for them."

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.

Walking in their shoes

The officers also wore tape recorders that simulated what an individual might hear if they 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.

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

While all the 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

But CIT is helping. 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.

Mental illness cases growing

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.

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," Madden said.