Reuters

By Jilian Mincer and Eric M. Johnson

December 29, 2015

Excerpt from the article

Most U.S. police receive little or no training on how best to handle crises involving the mentally ill despite the growing frequency of such encounters and the fatal results in a number of recent cases.

Although more departments have added or expanded training in recent years as they faced greater scrutiny and litigation, the vast majority offer at best a maximum of 40 hours and are not reaching enough officers, according to police and mental health advocates.

“We’re asking the police to fill the gaps that have been created by inadequate mental health resources,” said Ron Holberg, national director for policy and legal affairs at the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

“It seems sadly ironic, tragically ironic when you call 911 about someone having a heart attack, they send a trained EMT professional, but when you call about someone in psychotic crisis, a psychotic episode, they send police,” he added.

Mentally ill people have been shot to death in recent years by police in Texas, California, Colorado and Virginia. Americans with severe mental illness are 16 times more likely to be killed by police than other civilians, an advocacy group found.