Mental Illness and Impact on Law Enforcement

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Mental Illness Impacts Law Enforcement Resources A LOSE – LOSE SITUATION By: Kelly Gunning, Operations Director NAMI Lexington, Ky. In recent months advocates from NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) have met with officials from the Fayette County Public Advocacy Office; both sides bemoaning the ever enlarging number of individuals with severe mental illness coursing through the criminal justice system. The court system and the jails are undoubtedly becoming the default mental health system in an unrecognized and misunderstood crisis. Police officers, sheriff’s deputies, and corrections personnel have become our nation’s frontline mental health workers. A recently released study, “The Impact of Mental Illness on Law Enforcement Resources” (M.C. Biasotti, 2011) included a nationwide survey of 2400 senior level law enforcement personnel from across the United States. The study and the survey confirm reports that law enforcement service calls involving mental illness are increasingly diverting resources away from public safety by requiring officers to spend increasing amounts of time responding to, transporting and staying with acutely ill individuals in hospital emergency roomsThis is not a new headline for those involved on the frontline but there has never been specific research related to the impact of law enforcement becoming the societal default system for mental health crises. The list below reflects some major findings of the study by Michael C. Biasotti, Chief of Police, New Windsor, New York. The additional comments are made as an attempt to shed light on what is happening locally and the significant global issues impacting the severely mentally ill in our state and our nation.  State laws that make it possible for people in psychiatric crisis to be hospitalized involuntarily in an emergency are poorly understood or perceived as too complicated to

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