By Claire Sachse
claire.sachse@tryondailybulletin.com

Police officers are often the first responders to emergency calls involving people with a serious mental illness, a drug or alcohol problem or a developmental disability. Typically, officers manage the crisis situation by transporting the person to the nearest hospital or jail for an involuntary commitment. Law enforcement, medical personnel and the patients themselves agree that those two options are often not ideal or helpful in a long-term sense, and in fact, strain the resources of those two systems.

Recognizing the need to address these crisis situations in the person’s home or personal setting without adding the trauma or stigma of an involuntary commitment, the Columbus Police Department has been sending its officers to Crisis Intervention Training programs at Blue Ridge Community College. In November, Patrolman Danny Edwards became the department’s fifth officer to complete the training.

“A crisis situation can be a vet with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, a mentally ill person or someone with schizophrenia, dementia, Alzheimer’s, or someone who has gone off their medication,” said Edwards. “When someone goes off their meds they can be very hard to handle and caregivers often call the police for help.”

Instead of automatically transporting the person to the hospital or jail, Edwards said that the emphasis is now on resolving the crisis “through other avenues.” Western North Carolina has mobile crisis management services that are available to be dispatched around the clock at the responding officer’s request. These medical personnel offer on-site intervention and stabilization for people experiencing a crisis, as well as longer-term monitoring on an outpatient basis. The Veteran’s Administration also has an on-call specialist who will respond if the call involves a veteran.

The CIT program, said Edwards, involved simulations and role-play so officers could talk through and physically experience what someone with PTSD, schizophrenia or other psychotic episodes was thinking and experiencing.

“Actors portrayed people with schizophrenia and who were bi-polar. They taught us how to de-escalate the situation,” said Edwards.

To simulate what someone with schizophrenia experiences, he was asked to complete various tasks while wearing headphones that repeatedly played berating negative voices. In other situations he was asked to tackle tasks while wearing goggles and gloves to replicate the sensory deprivation experienced by some mentally ill people.

Edwards said that more and more vets are returning with PTSD and find that settling into a “normal” routine can be very difficult. What many consider to be common routines, like driving down a street, can be fraught with stressors.

“In Iraq and Afghanistan you don’t stop at stop signs or corners because that makes you a target. Also, someone with PTSD sees a bag of trash at the curb as a potential IED. PTSD used to be called battle fatigue but now we’re looking at it as a mental episode. We often see vets self-medicating with drugs and alcohol,” said Edwards.

Editor’s note: We’d like to recognize those in our community who help make a difference in the quality of our lives. In that spirit, we plan to regularly feature the men and women making a difference. To recommend someone be featured here please email us at news@tryondailybulletin.com, with subject line: Getting to know you.