Cincinnati State offers crisis intervention training
October 30, 2008
It happens all the time: Police, firefighters, ambulance crews are called out on an emergency run because someone with a mental illness is in the midst of a crisis of some sort.
Sometimes the public safety crews are sent to a private residence. Sometimes to a workplace. Sometimes to a school campus.
In an effort to help first responders deal with such situations, Cincinnati State Technical and Community College is offering a new course focused on crisis situations involving persons with mental illness. The course, called Crisis Intervention Teams (CIT), is designed to improve the safety of those responding to the crisis, the person who triggers it, and the public at large.
Police officers, school officials, employers and others often report that they feel unprepared for “mental disturbance” incidents -- and that they sometimes encounter barriers when they try to get someone who is displaying psychiatric symptoms transferred quickly and safely to an appropriate mental health treatment facility.
The CIT course is designed to address these concerns by providing specialized training on how best to respond to people in crisis with serious mental illness. Students will learn to recognize the signs of psychiatric distress and how to de-escalate a crisis — avoiding injuries, and promoting safety for all involved.
Communities across the country are adopting the crisis intervention team approach in an effort to help keep people with mental illnesses out of jail. Studies show that appropriate use of crisis de-escalation techniques can significantly reduce arrests of people with serious mental illnesses.
Moreover, the use of such teams has been shown to reduce officer injuries, SWAT team emergencies and the amount of time officers spend on the disposition of mental disturbance calls.
After the introduction of crisis intervention teams in Memphis, for example, injuries to officers during responses to “mental disturbance” calls dropped 80 percent.
Cincinnati State’s effort will deliver the benefits of these techniques to the wider community. The new course is appropriate not only for police officers, but also for employers, teachers, school officials, government workers, private security personnel, fire and rescue workers, social service workers and family members.
This course will be offered for the first time during the Late Fall term (which runs from Nov. 12 through Jan. 21, 2009) on Wednesday evenings from 7 p.m. until 9:50 p.m. The college plans to repeat the course in subsequent terms.
Cincinnati State students can register online.
Persons in the community can register using this link: http://www.cincinnatistate.edu/FutureStudent/Admission/NonDegreeSeeker.htm
This course is also available for credit or as a non-credit workshop through Cincinnati State’s Workforce Development Center. For more information call Jane Dunigan, Business Manager at (513) 569-1462 or email jane.dunigan@cincinnatistate.edu.
For further information about the course itself contact Robert Baylor, Program Chair, Cincinnati State Safety and Security Program, 513.569.4857, robert.baylor@cincinnatistate.edu or Paul Komarek, Adjunct Instructor, 513.673.4992, paul.komarek@cincinnatistate.edu.
About Cincinnati State

Cincinnati State offers more than 75 associate degree and 40 certificate programs in business technologies, health and public safety, engineering technologies, humanity and sciences and information technologies. About 8,150 students were enrolled in the early fall 2008 term; last year 14,000 separate students participated in credit and non-credit classes.
Cincinnati State has a 93% placement rate within three months of graduation, and its students have a 91% pass rate on required licensing and registry exams. It has the largest co-op program among two-year colleges in the U.S.
