MERIDIAN —     County and city law enforcement officers are joining forces with mental health officials to learn how to handle individuals who are facing mental health crises.

    Chief Deputy Ward Calhoun of the Lauderdale County Sheriff's Department said it's unfortunate that mental health issues often turn into law enforcement problems, but it happens routinely.

    In 2010, the Mississippi Legislature passed a Crisis Intervention Team bill that allows properly-trained law officers to seek help on behalf of a person they believe to be mentally ill. It is not uncommon for officers to respond to calls from family or neighbors of people who are having a mental crisis, he said.

    "Several times a week these types of calls come in that we in law enforcement are woefully ill-prepared to deal with and we have very limited resources to respond. If we show up out there, we don't have a whole lot of options," Calhoun said. "Your family can go to Chancery Court and file paperwork to have a hearing to make a determination about whether you're in need of mental health evaluation because you're a danger to yourself or others."

    That route is taken in cases where the person who needs treatment doesn't want it or does not understand that he or she needs help. It's a cumbersome and antiquated way of handling individuals with mental health problems, Calhoun said. Adding to the problem is the difficulty uninsured families have in getting treatment for their loved ones.

    The other option is putting the person in jail for a misdemeanor charge such as disturbing the peace.

    "Putting a person with a mental illness or having a mental health crisis in jail is not helping matters," Calhoun said. "They're not going to get the kind of help they need."

    The new law allows law officers, if they have been CIT trained, to take an individual in crisis to what is referred to as a single point of entry. That is a facility equipped to handle mental health patients, which advocates say is a better option than jail.

    "Most states in our country do these kinds of things already," Calhoun said. "We are way behind the times in terms of how to do this."

    The good news is that training is available to help create better outcomes for mental health patients.

    "What studies have shown over time is that officers get injured less, those individuals they deal with get injured less," Calhoun said. "The training not only focuses on identifying individuals in a mental health crisis, but strategies to de-escalate situations where before, perhaps, officers would have been quicker to act as opposed to talk."

    There is a lot that can be done to defuse a situation and keep things under control, if an officer knows what to do, he said. The mentally ill don't often know that they need help, he said.

    "They are not willfully not doing what we're telling them to do, but because of their actions and the way they are responding, we end up taking them to jail," Calhoun said. "Where they need to go is somewhere to get some help."

    Details have not yet been worked out regarding a facility in Lauderdale County, but Calhoun said they are working on a plan for that.

    Under the CIT system, once a person has been taken in for treatment, a physician, nurse practitioner or physician assistant will have to evaluate the patient.

    Then the facility will have 72 hours to go before a judge in Chancery Court to set a hearing that will determine if mental health treatment is needed.

    Before officers can operate a Crisis Intervention Team, training is necessary so they know how to react to people in a mental health crisis.

    A $250,000 Bureau of Justice Assistance grant to the county is funding training for officers and will help fund implementation of a single point of entry. Meridian police officers and Lauderdale County deputies will take part in the training, set for Sept. 17-21.

    "We're going to be hosting our first 40-hour Basic CIT class," Calhoun said. "We're hoping to have 14 or 15 officers that will be here locally and will be trained that week."

    Weems Community Mental Health Center is the mental health partner for the grant. Other partners include: Alliance Health Center, Anderson Regional Medical Center, Care Lodge Domestic Violence Shelter, Central Mississippi Residential Center, E-911 Dispatch, East Mississippi State Hospital, Greater Meridian Health Clinic, L.O.V.E. Kitchen, Lauderdale County Chancery Court, Lauderdale County Sheriff’s Dept., Meridian Police Dept., Metro Ambulance, Mississippi Dept. of Corrections, Mississippi Dept. of Mental Health, Mississippi State University Meridian Campus, NAMI Meridian (National Alliance on Mental Health), NAMI Mississippi, Rush Health Systems, and the Tenth Judicial District Drug Court.