Effects of a Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) Training Program upon police officers before and after crisis intervention team training: an evidenced based program evaluation project in Miami Dade county Florida

Throughout communities across the United States, police officers frequently come in contact with individuals who are experiencing an active state of mental health crisis and do not have the necessary skills to safely and effectively intervene. The deinstitutionalization of patients in American psychiatric hospitals began in the 1970s (Burris, 2004). This policy was meant to be a way to help re-integrate those chronically ill patients back into the community (Burris, 2004). The theory of deinstitutionalization consists of component processes: the release of persons residing in psychiatric hospitals to families and alternative living facilities in the community, the diversion of potential new admissions to alternative community facilities, and the development of special services for the care of non-institutionalized mentally ill persons (Lamb & Bachrach, 2001). The limitation of this approach was that these services were limited and inadequate.