| NAMI is involved with
award-winning local police trainers, the area ADAMHS Board,
and other groups in holding week-long courses designed to
train police officers from around Southeastern Ohio to
recognize the mentally ill and take them for evaluation and
treatment rather than to jail. In early 2008, Athens' CIT
program was recognized by the Ohio Department of Mental
Health and NAMI Ohio as the "CIT
Program of the Year."
As of November 2009, seven groups of officers - a total of
165 individuals - have passed through these courses and
several hundred persons in crisis with mental illnesses have subsequently been diverted
to receive evaluation and appropriate treatment. (Eighty
five to 90 % of the individuals taken by CIT-trained police
to receive psychiatric evaluation turn out to have a serious
mental illness.)
Much of the funding for these programs has come from
grants from the local, state, and national NAMI
organizations and, in both 2004 and 2009, from grants to
NAMI Athens from the Athens Foundation. |
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