Collaborations between the law enforcement and mental health communities have become vital as law enforcement officers are often first-line responders in crisis situations involving individuals with mental illnesses. A nationally recognised example of a pre-booking jail diversion program, the Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) model, was developed in 1988 following a fatal police shooting of a person with a history of a mental illness. The model is a close collaboration among law enforcement, the mental health system, and advocates. CIT programs provide specialised training for police officers to assist them in safely and effectively responding to individuals with mental illnesses and obtaining appropriate services that will adequately address these individuals' needs in lieu of incarceration when appropriate. This book examines the CIT model and the reasons why it is a unique and important collaboration between law enforcement and mental health.

This is the first truly interdisciplinary book that examines how professionals work together within community mental health. It takes into account the key concepts of community mental health and combines them with current technology to develop an effective formula that redefines the community mental health practice.

The Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) program has become a globally recognized model for safely and effectively assisting people with mental and substance use disorders who experience crises in the community. The CIT Model promotes strong community partnerships among law enforcement, behavioral health providers, people with mental and substance use disorders, along with their families and others. While law enforcement agencies have a central role in program development and ongoing operations, a continuum of crisis services available to citizens prior to police involvement is part of the model. These other community services (e.g., mobile crisis teams, crisis phone lines) are essential for avoiding criminal justice system involvement for those with behavioral health challenges ? a goal of CIT programs (Steadman & Morrissette, 2016). CIT is just one part of a robust continuum of behavioral health services for the whole community.

This book describes the signs and symptoms of a variety of psychiatric illnesses, substance abuse disorders and developmental disabilities that may be encountered by first responders, public safety officials, and criminal justice professionals. Individual chapters describe specific categories of mental illnesses, and provide basic skills to enhance interactions with people who have these disorders, and who may be facing stressful situations.

The Ghostbusters refrain "Who you gonna call?" typically connotes a lighthearted response to an unusual problem, but in the context of a human being suffering a mental health crisis, the refrain is anything but lighthearted. In an ideal world, "who you gonna call" would be a trained mental health professional. In the real world, the cry for help is usually received by the police. Police respond because there is no one else to assist. Police officers rank mental health crisis situations as far more stressful than crimes in progress. A person, suffering from mental illness is, by definition, not fully rational. Although they are likewise not fully irrational, behavior is unpredictable, and unpredictable behavior for the police is potentially dangerous behavior. As a consequence, outcomes of engagement between law enforcement and mental health consumers are too often tragic. No organization is more concerned about inadequate response than the police themselves. Improving Police Response to Mental Illness provides best practices guidance. A national pool of experts provide both insight and recommendations, ranging from the conceptual, Atypical Situations-Atypical Responses, to the pragmatic, Law Enforcement Training Models. Written specifically for the book, each chapter addresses a given critical component, including social policy, police response alternatives, training, legal constraints, and cooperative agreements with mental health service providers. This is an indispensable volume on the subject of police and mental health and is designed for police practitioners, mental health professionals, and scholars of social policy.

An in-depth examination of the factors contributing to the criminalization of mental illness and strategies to combat them.

Grounded in contemporary social work practice approaches such as trauma-informed practice, cultural competency, and systems theory, this book provides a model for developing, implementing, and evaluating police social work and social service collaboration within the context of contemporary policing strategies. The practice of professional social work in law enforcement agencies is increasingly becoming an important area of practice. Police social work, as it is known, benefits community residents and assists law enforcement agencies with accomplishing community policing and other problem-solving initiatives. Throughout 13 chapters, this book covers: The practice of professional social work within law enforcement agencies The types of social problems addressed and characteristics of police social work collaborations Ethical and other practice issues that arise when collaborating with law enforcement agencies and required practice skills to address these issues An examination of collaborations formed between law enforcement agencies and social services agencies in which the service providers are not professional social workers A model for developing police social work collaborations and investigating collaboration effectiveness Expanded roles for police social work practice such as consultation, officer selection, training recruits and police officers, and assisting their families Police Social Work provides a wealth of case studies and other reference material to prepare students for police social work practice, as well as serving as a resource for police officers, recruits, and students majoring in policing.

Law enforcement has historically been on the frontlines of the mental health crisis. This expected role is difficult as police officers are not trained as mental health professionals. Collaboration between police officers, mental health professionals, and mental health authorities have produced integral models to assist with the mental health crisis. Crisis intervention teams (CIT), mobile crisis units, and street triage models are highlighted to gain understanding of the components of these models. This study desires to examine a collaborative, recently implemented mental health deputy grant program aimed at diverting mentally ill individuals in crisis from contact with the criminal justice system and connecting individuals in crisis to appropriate treatment services. This exploratory, descriptive design allowed for data to be categorized from a log containing synopses of each encounter over an eight-month span. The relationship between variables of cross-tabulated, nominal data was analyzed. Results show that mental health deputies are diverting mentally ill individuals from contact with the criminal justice system, connecting them to emergent treatment services and long-term community services.

The Social Determinants of Mental Health aims to fill the gap that exists in the psychiatric, scholarly, and policy-related literature on the social determinants of mental health: those factors stemming from where we learn, play, live, work, and age that impact our overall mental health and well-being. The editors and an impressive roster of chapter authors from diverse scholarly backgrounds provide detailed information on topics such as discrimination and social exclusion; adverse early life experiences; poor education; unemployment, underemployment, and job insecurity; income inequality, poverty, and neighborhood deprivation; food insecurity; poor housing quality and housing instability; adverse features of the built environment; and poor access to mental health care. This thought-provoking book offers many beneficial features for clinicians and public health professionals: Clinical vignettes are included, designed to make the content accessible to readers who are primarily clinicians and also to demonstrate the practical, individual-level applicability of the subject matter for those who typically work at the public health, population, and/or policy level. Policy implications are discussed throughout, designed to make the content accessible to readers who work primarily at the public health or population level and also to demonstrate the policy relevance of the subject matter for those who typically work at the clinical level. All chapters include five to six key points that focus on the most important content, helping to both prepare the reader with a brief overview of the chapter's main points and reinforce the "take-away" messages afterward. In addition to the main body of the book, which focuses on selected individual social determinants of mental health, the volume includes an in-depth overview that summarizes the editors' and their colleagues' conceptualization, as well as a final chapter coauthored by Dr. David Satcher, 16th Surgeon General of the United States, that serves as a "Call to Action," offering specific actions that can be taken by both clinicians and policymakers to address the social determinants of mental health. The editors have succeeded in the difficult task of balancing the individual/clinical/patient perspective and the population/public health/community point of view, while underscoring the need for both groups to work in a unified way to address the inequities in twenty-first century America. The Social Determinants of Mental Health gives readers the tools to understand and act to improve mental health and reduce risk for mental illnesses for individuals and communities. Students preparing for the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) will also benefit from this book, as the MCAT in 2015 will test applicants' knowledge of social determinants of health. The social determinants of mental health are not distinct from the social determinants of physical health, although they deserve special emphasis given the prevalence and burden of poor mental health.

Although a specific program called the Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) has been generally recognized as the best-practice model that addresses the needs of the police officers in responding to mental health calls, many jurisdictions across the country have not only adopted the full CIT model but also have taken the liberty of adding new components and/or removing components of the original model in order to create a unique program that fits the needs of their individual community. The issue of differentiated adaptations of the original CIT model has created a controversy around best practice in the area of police response to individuals with mental health issues who are in crisis. Using an on-line survey and interview methods, this study examined a relationship between the degree of variation within specialized policing response models and their corresponding community characteristics. Previous research shows that the components of the original CIT model have positive influence on officers' confidence in interacting with people with mental illness. Therefore, this study also hypothesized that a rating of an SPR police officers' job satisfaction was likely to correlate with the degree to which an SPR program adhered to the original CIT model. The study found that mental health resources, extent of presence of special populations in a community, existence of SPR policies in law enforcement, mental health, and dispatch departments, and how much law enforcement and mental health administrators supported the program, all predicted the degree of total deviation of a program from the original CIT model. Population density, related to a distinction between rural and non-rural communities, did not predict the degree of deviation from the original CIT model. The study also found that the degree of deviation of a program from the original CIT model did not strongly predict the rating of SPR officers' job satisfaction. The study discusses the possible reasons for the results as well as implications for stakeholders who are considering implementation of a Specialized Policing Response model in their communities. Limitations of the current study's research design are also discussed.