Law Enforcement Responses to Mental Health Crises
- Knowing how best to respond to these crises can:
- prevent escalation,
- minimize the risks for psychological and physical harm to the involved persons, law enforcement, and witnesses.
- Mental health advocates need to include law enforcement officers to:
- advocate for better mental health advocacy laws,
- better understand the mental health needs of young adult and youth offenders
- collaboratively problem solve to reduce the number of these encounters.
Police officers have become the defacto first responders to crises involving persons with mental illness.
Here are some Dos and Donts in responding to a person in crisis with mental illness (click here for a printable card in pdf format):
DO
- Introduce yourself
- Remain calm
- Take your time
- Be patient
- Look over the situation
- Continually assess the situation
- Ask others to leave the area that are causing agitation
- Maintain safe and comfortable distance
- Have only one person communicate with the individual
- Give clear specific directions
- Be respectful
- Offer assistance
- Be reassuring
- Respond to “emotional” or “feeling” content
- Know that you are dealing with someone with an illness
DON’T
- Lose your composure
- Get excited
- Shout or give rapid orders
- Startle the individual
- Move suddenly
- Act in anger
- Threaten
- Abuse
- Deceive
- Agree/disagree with delusions
- Touch
- Ridicule
- Tease or joke
- Whisper to others
- Confuse the individual
From: “Law Enforcement Street Guide to Mental Illness,” this pocket manual was written by Captain Melissa Beasley and Henry Stough, retired Mental Health Authority Director, Montgomery, Alabama. Find the full manual at www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org.