Ten percent of our population will suffer severe mental illness at some point in their lives. Mentally ill people are 16 times more likely to be shot by police. This is a huge problem in our society that must be addressed.
The key is training. All law enforcement should have intense training by mental health experts on how to recognize a psychotic break and what to do to diffuse such situations. Mentally ill people, by definition, will often not respond logically to police commands, triggering a chain of events that can too often lead to an unnecessary death. These are tragedies that can be averted with the proper training.
Currently Mississippi’s Department of Mental Health and the U.S. Department of Justice are engaged in a huge civil lawsuit over mental health policy in our state. Mississippi has for too long relied on mass institutionalization rather than decentralized community-based treatment plans. Effective crisis response teams are one of the key aspects of this lawsuit, with the feds pushing our state to do more.
In today’s complex and chaotic society, fragile human minds can easily snap under too much stress. It can happen to anyone. We need law enforcement to understand mental illness so people can be calmed down and properly treated, not shot and killed out of ignorance and lack of training.
