Sangam: A Confluence of Knowledge Streams

Police Intervention in Mental Health Crisis: A Case Study of the Bloomington Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) Program

Show simple item record

dc.contributor Luskin, Mary Lee
dc.creator Stewart, Cindy
dc.date 2010-06-16T17:51:28Z
dc.date 2027-02-16T18:51:29Z
dc.date 2012-03-11T00:34:43Z
dc.date 2010-06-16T17:51:28Z
dc.date 2009
dc.date.accessioned 2023-02-21T11:17:47Z
dc.date.available 2023-02-21T11:17:47Z
dc.identifier http://hdl.handle.net/2022/8856
dc.identifier.uri http://localhost:8080/xmlui/handle/CUHPOERS/252886
dc.description Thesis (Ph.D.) - Indiana University, Criminal Justice, 2009
dc.description Owing to the closure of state mental hospitals and limited funding for mental health programs, police increasingly must respond to calls involving persons in mental health crisis. Unfortunately, police officers often do not have the skills or the resources to respond effectively. As a result, many mentally ill persons are arrested and subsequently incarcerated leading to an endemic problem of jails and prisons acting as "the new asylums." In many communities, police and mental health service providers have joined forces to address this problem. One response, which first emerged in Memphis, Tennessee, is Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) training for police officers. Programs modeled on the Memphis CIT training have been adopted across the United States. Indeed, several states are currently considering mandating that all state and local police agencies provide CIT training to their officers. As the program has spread, however, police agencies have adapted the Memphis Model in different ways. As a result, there is no national model or standard for what constitutes CIT training. In particular, there are questions about what the role of mental health advocates should be in designing the CIT training, whether all police officers in a department or only volunteers should receive CIT training, and how the training can be adapted for cities of different size. Moreover, little is known about whether CIT training actually improves police officers' responses to persons in mental health crisis. Building on two pilot studies this research combines qualitative and quantitative data to address these questions of content and effectiveness. This study examines the larger community context of one CIT program through interviews and focus groups with police officers, medical personnel and community members. In addition, this study utilizes data from officer-completed incident response sheets to examine the effects of CIT training. Specifically, the study addresses (1) whether CIT training affects how frequently officers report persons as having a mental illness, (2) how officers respond to and resolve incidents involving persons whom they believe to be in mental health crisis, and (3) whether there are differences in responses between CIT and non-CIT trained officers.
dc.language EN
dc.publisher [Bloomington, Ind.] : Indiana University
dc.rights This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
dc.rights http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
dc.subject mental health crisis
dc.subject community
dc.subject Diversion programs
dc.subject Crisis Intervention Training
dc.subject Police responses
dc.subject mental illness
dc.subject Health Sciences, Mental Health
dc.subject Psychology, Social
dc.subject Sociology, Criminology and Penology
dc.title Police Intervention in Mental Health Crisis: A Case Study of the Bloomington Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) Program
dc.type Doctoral Dissertation


Files in this item

Files Size Format View
Stewart_indiana_0093A_10580.pdf 740.3Kb application/pdf View/Open

This item appears in the following Collection(s)

Show simple item record

Search DSpace


Advanced Search

Browse