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The Voice of CIT International  

 

Celebrating 28 Years of CIT

                    November 2015
 
November 2015 Contents

CIT International has announced a 

Next Conference Chicago April 25-27 2016 Chicago IL
Deadline for Submissions of Presentations  is Nov 20, 2015

Registration now Open


  
2016 AWARD NOMINATIONS
 NOW OPEN
 
 Nominations Must be Submitted by: 
 January 8, 2016
 
                  Go to:  AWARDS LINK
Awards to be presented at April Conference

   Don't miss out on nominating someone who has shown    exemplary work, commitment and passion with their CIT program.

Categories:
LE First Responder 
Corrections Officer
CIT Coordinator
Consumer
 
Advocate
Sheriff, Chief of Police or Commander     
Behavioral Healthcare Practitioner

 


Click on
    


U.S. Dept of Justice Investigative Reports on police organizations 

Federal Justice officials have released their first 93-page review of how Portland (OR) police are complying with a host of required policy, training and oversight reforms.

From Dept. of Justice report - page 51:  footnote:

"To assist in further development of a Memphis Model CIT program, BHU, training staff, and ECIT officers should be encouraged to attend the CIT International Conference, to the extent possible, April 25-27, 2016 in Chicago http://citconferences.org/ "


full report can be read at:


More U.S. Dept of Justice Reports:
 


from our website www.citinternational.org

Learn more about CIT and CIT startup

The Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) Program is a model community initiative that emerged in Memphis, Tennessee that seeks to bridge the gap between police officers and the mental health system. The model is designed to create partnerships between law enforcement, behavioral health professionals, service recipients and their families. CIT helps to provide a forum for effective community problem solving and communication. Research also shows that communities that prescribe to the CIT Program model, have higher success rates in resolving explosive crisis situations.
In order to start an effective CIT Program, an understanding of the guiding principles and elements is needed. A strong CIT Program is more than just a training curriculum and the materials below have been created to help provide a strong foundation for understanding the CIT model.  
Contents:
1.  "One Page Overview of CIT"

2.  "What is CIT"

3. "CIT Broader Overview"

4. "Core Elements of CIT"

5.  "5 Legs of the Stool"


SUCCESS STORY 

DAILY HERALD 10/11/2015 
New mental health approach for police: Offering solutions
Officers receiving more training for mental health emergencies  
Marie Wilson
Police officers such as Jodie Wise in Lisle are being called upon more often to respond to mental health crises -- often enough that many departments are seeking additional training to teach them the best ways to help
Photo by Bev Horne
Two police officers pull onto a bridge carrying one busy suburban road over another, where a young woman's feet dangle over the edge. They can tell she's in distress, a danger to herself. They call in reinforcements. 

The next three officers who respond know what they're doing in situations like this, a mental health emergency.

Trained as a Crisis Intervention Team, these officers get the woman talking. That's important.

"If she's talking, she's not doing what we don't want her to do," said Lisle police Sgt. Dennis Canik, one of three crisis negotiators who kept up conversations for more than two hours until officers could get the woman away from the edge and take her to a mental health hospital. "It kind of makes her feel like, 'OK, maybe these guys care about what's going on.'" 

Knoxville News Sentinel
Incarceration of mentally ill focus of talk

Kristi L. Nelson
...Leslie El-Sayad, president of NAMI Tennessee said:  the "craziest" thing is "that law enforcement is considered a modality of treatment for a disease" when the disease is mental illness.
"Is law enforcement considered a modality of treatment for heart disease, or cancer?" she asked.
A diabetic who is acting erratically and is taken to a hospital after accidentally taking too much insulin, for example, is "off to treatment the minute they identify they have a disease. But our people aren't. Our people are sitting, waiting, not sure they're ever going to get treatment. And when they do, it's the most Band-Aid of treatments."
read more



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    Please Support CIT--A better way to interact with persons with mental illness in crisis



Browse Recent News Articles on CIT & Related topics that appeared in September and October 2015 media.  Among them are newspaper articles, TV news reports and videos, radio talk programs and video clips of specific trainings.


This link leads to a sampling of CIT related news items gathered from the September & October 2015 news media.


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Our WebsiteNational Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) on CIT
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email:  [email protected]                      
                                                
 celebrating over 25 years of  CIT


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