Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) Training: Selection Effects and Long-Term Changes in Perceptions of Mental Illness and Community Preparedness

Abstract

Survey data were used to assess how training affects changes in officers’ perceptions of persons with mental illness as well as perceptions of police and the mental health system's preparedness in addressing their needs. Officers’ confidence in their ability to handle calls involving people with mental illness in crisis increased most over time. Exploratory analysis indicated that this increase was positively associated with the pretraining degree to which people with mental illness in crisis present a problem for the police department. This increase was positively associated with the perception that the police department's overall effectiveness in meeting the needs of people with mental illness in crisis and negatively associated with the degree to which mental illness was believed to be caused by parental upbringing. These findings suggest that initial salience of the problem for the police department posed by those with mental illness is critical to CIT officer eventual “success.”