Managing agitated patients in the emergency department (ED) can cause a significant amount of anxiety to providers. Traditionally, medical staff were trained to use physical and/or chemical restraints as a first step approach when treating this patient population. Recent literature now encourages a greater emphasis on the use of de-escalation techniques, where the physician and patient work together to help the patient manage his or her emotions and behavior. Currently, there is a gap in knowledge on how to provide effective de-escalation training for emergency medicine providers and the training’s impact on patient care. The goal of this project is to better understand if interactive training on the crisis development model with a focus on verbal de-escalation techniques will increase the comfort levels of providers while caring for behavioral health patients in the ED. A secondary objective is to understand the staff’s perception of the ED working environment. Participants were selected from Penn State Medical Center ED physicians, residents, and mid-level providers who attended one of the de-escalation training seminars. Two 2-hour interactive training sessions consisting of didactics and interactive role-playing scenarios to practice the crisis development model were provided. Surveys containing qualitative and quantitative questions to analyze the course's effectiveness and to understand ED clinicians' experiences were completed by attendees immediately prior to and directly after the training. The results of this study will inform future de-escalation training practices within the ED. In the pilot study consisting of two training sessions, a total of 58 attendees completed the pre-training survey and 42 attendees completed the post-training survey. When the group was asked to rate their comfort level using verbal de-escalation techniques in the care of the ED behavioral health patient on a scale of 1-10 prior to and immediately after the training session, the average score increased from 5.9 to 7.5 with a p-value < 0.01. After the de-escalation course, 34 of 42 (76.2%) participants reported they would be less likely to immediately just to physical restraints p-value < 0.01 and 46 of 47 (97.9%) participants reported the de-escalation course helped them re-evaluate how they approach behavioral health patients p-value < 0.01. Participants reported the mode of being verbally insulted by patients in the ED was monthly and 38% responded they did not have any coping mechanisms to deal with this stress. The results of the initial pilot study indicate that the majority of attendees feel the de-escalation training taught as an interactive lecture has changed the way they will approach behavioral health patients. One limitation was that not all attendees completed the post-evaluation survey, which may have introduced biases in the results. Additionally, the current methods do not provide a means to examine whether the new skill set was actually implemented by clinicians. However, the high proportion of clinicians who self-reported that they would be implementing the techniques are extremely promising.