Responding to Emotionally Disturbed Persons

Mental illness, crisis, suicide, death, and other topics discussed in this text are inherent in our lives. However, for those individuals in law enforcement, encountering death, violence, trauma, crisis, and those with mental illness is an everyday occurrence. This publication is intended to bring information to the law enforcement community about dealing with those individuals who present to the officer in distress. It is desigened to provide another "tool" for the officer to throw into their never ending "bag of tricks", to dispel the myths surrounding mental illness, and to assist the officer when confronted with a psychological situation. It is the author's hope that in providing this training and information for Law Enforcement, that when an officer encounters a subject who is emotionally disturbed, the situation will end positively.