A national train-the-trainer program to enhance police response to veterans with mental health issues: Primary officer and trainer outcomes and material dissemination.

Abstract

Law enforcement officers (LEOs) may play the most important role in directing people in mental health crises into treatment versus incarceration. While most military veterans will never experience a crisis interaction with LEOs, they represent an important at-risk target group for whom to enhance LEO response. The evidence supporting LEO crisis training models includes important limitations that stem from jurisdiction-limited studies, and emphasize LEOs who volunteer for mental health training. The current study reports the primary outcomes of a national (U.S.) large-scale mandated train-the-trainer program to enhance VA LEO response to military veterans with mental health issues. Multidisciplinary teams comprised of VA LEOs, Veterans Justice Outreach Specialists, and mental health professionals (n = 245) were trained in two nested waves. Both trainers and endpoint LEOs (n = 1,284) improved from pretest to posttest on knowledge and skills in identifying psychological services and related treatment referral resources and cross-discipline collaboration, the latter of which showed some retention at 3-month follow-up. The findings support the potential for LEOs mandated to training to improve in important prerequisites to diverting people with mental health issues into care, and away from the criminal justice system. Such results may require professional trainers of LEOs who have themselves received relevant specific training. Potential cautions of such an approach, including interteam differences and potential for publication bias in extant literature, are also elucidated by the current methodology. The links to all of the collaboratively-developed curriculum materials from the current study are provided for use by qualified professionals. Impact StatementAcross a wide range of regions and jurisdictions, police can improve in mental health knowledge as well as skills in identifying psychological services and related treatment resource options and collaborating with mental health professionals, even when they are mandated to training versus volunteering. Such positive outcomes may require that trainers work in highly trained, multidisciplinary teams. Access to curriculum materials used to achieve these outcomes is provided in this article.

Community-based participatory research with police: Development of a tech-enhanced structured suicide risk assessment and communication smartphone application.

“…The expected roles that police officers may play with regard to suicide risk assessment and management parallel those of health and mental health providers. Although suicide is not specifically a mental health phenomenon from the standpoint of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders or medical models (e.g., Mościcki, 1997), police officers' training on suicide risk is often enhanced through their gold-standard mental health crisis intervention team training model (Cochran et al, 2000;Dupont & Cochran, 2000) and derivations thereof (e.g., Mok et al, 2018;Steadman et al, 2001;Weaver et al, 2013Weaver et al, , 2021. The crisis intervention team model also identifies systemic stressors that increase the need to provide police with effective and efficient means of evaluating and documenting suicide risk.…”

Evaluating Veterans Response Teams and Police Interventions on Veterans' Health Care Utilization

“…community partners have called for veteran-specific approaches and resources to improve outcomes for criminal justice-involved veterans. 5,6 In 2012, the VA began requiring training of VA's own police force on mental health identification, crisis de-escalation, referral to treatment resources, and collaboration between police and health care providers. 5 A national curriculum was developed and this training began to be offered to local police departments as well, which began the formation of Veterans Response Teams (VRTs).…”

“…5,6 In 2012, the VA began requiring training of VA's own police force on mental health identification, crisis de-escalation, referral to treatment resources, and collaboration between police and health care providers. 5 A national curriculum was developed and this training began to be offered to local police departments as well, which began the formation of Veterans Response Teams (VRTs). The VRTs are a cooperative engagement approach utilizing resources of local police departments, VA police, and the VA's Veterans Justice Outreach program.…”

“…A few demonstration projects have shown that law enforcement officers can be trained on VRT and other specialized training related to veterans. For example, a national train-the-trainer program, led by the VA, helped train more than 1000 trainers who were mostly law enforcement officers on veteran issues and the VA mental health resources and services 5. Although the training was not formalized to create VRTs, the project showed that there was community interest and it was feasible to implement veteran-specific training for law enforcement 6.…”

“…For example, a national train-the-trainer program, led by the VA, helped train more than 1000 trainers who were mostly law enforcement officers on veteran issues and the VA mental health resources and services. 5 Although the training was not formalized to create VRTs, the project showed that there was community interest and it was feasible to implement veteranspecific training for law enforcement. 6 Based on a literature search in major databases (eg, PubMed, Google Scholar), we could find no empirical study of clinical outcomes of VRTs.…”