(Apr. 28, 2015) We are definitely at the frontlines of this mental health crisis, police officer Charles Owen told filmmaker Michael Price in the documentary Lost Minds: KC's Mental Health Crisis.
The film explores the country’s broken mental health system through the eyes of law enforcement, health care professionals and people living with mental illness.
“I don’t do pills,” a homeless man, diagnosed with bipolar disorder told two police officers on camera. Later the same police officers encounter him passed out on a sidewalk.
In a country where half a million people with untreated serious psychiatric disease live on the streets or behind bars, members of law enforcement are often the first people to encounter someone in a psychiatric crisis, Price narrates.
“If they don’t take their medication, then all this is for nothing,” said Officer Owens. “We can take them to the hospital, they will meet the doctors, but if they don’t do the things they need to do on their end, then it’s not going to help.”
“Mental illness, if treated needn’t be a bar to a successful life,” Price says.
But at any given time, nearly 40% of the individuals with schizophrenia and 51% of those with bipolar disorder are untreated.
“A lot of the time, people with chronic and persistent mental illness don’t realize they need help,” social worker Sheryl Reed said.
“It would make my day if I could have every single member of my police department CIT trained,” said Captain Darren Ivey, Commander CIT Program, Kansas City. “CIT training helps officers reduce the likelihood that someone will get hurt.”
“But the goal needs to be to reach someone before they get to the point of a crisis,” he continued.
We couldn’t agree more.
Watch “Lost Minds: KC’s Mental Health Crisis.”
Read our study, “Prevalence of Mental Health Diversion Practices: A Survey of the States,” which found that fewer than half the US population lives in communities where the most basic methods of diverting people with severe mental illness from the criminal justice system are being used.
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