Knowledge and Skills for Social Workers on Mobile Crisis Intervention Teams

This chapter describes how police work shapes the health context of cities and neighborhoods, and affects the lives and behaviors of countless citizens. While there has been much concern in recent years about how some police activity has harmed health, particularly among minority communities, police have the potential to improve the health of the communities they serve. Police beat work is filled with low-intensity interactions in which officers serve as problem-solvers; these problems often involve public health. Police are first responders to opioid overdoses; they also intercede in intimate partner violence, and they engage with the homeless. As such, leveraging police involvement into better health outcomes could go a long way toward helping people solve these crises. Increasingly, large cities are developing crisis intervention teams (CITs) to improve safety and divert individuals from criminal justice involvement.

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Crisis Intervention after the Tsunami in Phuket and Khao Lak

Crisis ◽

10.1027/0227-5910.27.1.42 ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 27 (1) ◽

pp. 42-47 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Thomas Bronisch ◽

Markos Maragkos ◽

Christoph Freyer ◽

Andreas Müller-Cyran ◽

Willi Butollo ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Sri Lanka ◽

Crisis Intervention ◽

Task Force ◽

Organizational Structures ◽

German Government ◽

Identification Process ◽

Intervention Teams ◽

Tsunami Disaster ◽

Crisis Intervention Teams ◽

Set Up

After the Tsunami disaster in Southeast Asia, India, Sri Lanka, and Africa, the German government set up a crisis task force that implemented crisis-intervention teams covering Thailand (Phuket and Khao Lak), Sri Lanka, and Sumatra. Two crisis teams were sent to Phuket; the first one on 28 December 2004, and the second one on 3 January 2005, each for an average of 1 week. This intervention was primarily for the benefit of German citizens and their expatriates and relatives caught up in a major catastrophe as well as the German helpers. This article describes the organizational structures of the German crisis intervention, protective factors for the helpers, psychiatric syndromes - often acute traumata, the problems of the identification process for relatives, and crisis intervention itself. Consequences for further crisis intervention after natural disasters are discussed.

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Utilizing Crisis Intervention Teams in Prison to Improve Officer Knowledge, Stigmatizing Attitudes, and Perception of Response Options

Criminal Justice and Behavior ◽

10.1177/0093854820942274 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 48 (1) ◽

pp. 10-31

Author(s):

Kelli E. Canada ◽

Amy C. Watson ◽

Scott O’kelley

Keyword(s):

Crisis Intervention ◽

Health Knowledge ◽

Correctional Officers ◽

Response Options ◽

Intervention Teams ◽

People With Mental Illness ◽

Before And After ◽

Quasi Experimental ◽

Stigmatizing Attitudes ◽

Crisis Intervention Teams

People with mental illness (MI) are overrepresented in prisons, in part, because people with MI stay in prison longer. Correctional officers (COs) use discretion in force, violations, and segregation. Crisis intervention teams (CITs) are being used in corrections to reduce disparities in sanctioning and improve safety. This quasi-experimental, mixed-methods study includes 235 CIT COs who were surveyed before and after training on knowledge of MI, stigmatizing attitudes, and perception of response options. Non-CIT ( n = 599) officers completed the same survey. Randomly selected CIT COs completed interviews 6 to 9 months following training ( n = 17). CIT COs had significantly lower stigmatizing attitudes, more mental health knowledge, and better perceptions of options following CIT training compared with non-CIT COs. This preliminary work on CIT use in prison is promising; additional work is needed to determine whether these changes result in behavior change among COs and improvements in outcomes for people with MI.

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