Learning to respond in crises

This was a training scenario staffed and run by Mid-Columbia Center for Living’s employees. Before entering each room, teams read the scenario posted on the wall. Afterward, they debriefed with MCCFL’s observers.

The woman impersonating Jesus, a case manager, took the blanket off her head and gave the stumped officers some feedback. The old man, a therapist, straightened up and told a deputy she did pretty good talking him down, with some pointers for doing it better.

It’s the culmination of a 40-hour Crisis Intervention training for law enforcement and first responders, who had studied things like individual mental health disorders, available resources, use of force, and de-escalation all week, and then applied their learning in an afternoon of scenarios a few Fridays ago.

The week was filled with site visits, interactive talks, and learning how to fill out civil commitment paperwork on mentally ill subjects — by mock-filing it on a friend. This year’s class was the largest ever.

“Agencies want the soft skills taught, the 40 CIT week spends more time than the academy does on [mental health] and de-escalation,” said Stephen Bradley, who organizes the training with MCCFL.

Such trainings are “a model for community responses to helping people with mental illness. CIT programs bring stakeholders together from the law enforcement, behavioral health and advocacy sectors, along with people with lived experience with mental illness, to develop solutions for safely redirecting people in crisis away from the judicial system and into the health care system whenever appropriate,” MCCFL said.