Excerpts from ABC7Chicago.com:
Chicago police, firefighters and paramedics will partner with area hospitals in a program to better respond to mental health emergencies.
It’s a scene they encounter all the time-a disorderly person at a bar. But what they’re practicing in this scene is assessing whether the subject is experiencing a medical or behavioral emergency.
It’s a lesson emergency personnel will receive in a new, state-of-the-art crisis intervention training. The eight hour, scenario-based course involves all stages of a call, beginning with 911 operators and dispatchers. Ninety percent of them have already begun training.
“When the person calls in with a medical emergency, the dispatcher knows what type of questions to ask what kind of information to illicit from this patient and that information goes out to our teams,” Leslee Stein-Spencer, Chicago Fire Department, said.
Mental health experts helped design the course which aims to help different agencies better understand the roles each plays in responding to a mental health crisis.
“Nearly 2,500 CPD officers are now CIT trained, with 300 trained just in 2016 alone,” Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said.
The goal is to have 35 percent of the police department trained in mental health crisis response by the end of 2017 and to have those crisis intervention trained officers on each shift so they can be dispatched as needed.
thanks Dan
