About Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) training

Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) Training is 40 hours of specialized training for uniformed law enforcement officers in how to respond to calls involving mental health crises. It is a collaboration involving not only NAMI and officers, but also local mental health service providers and family members of people living with mental illness.

The course is presented over five days in four phases:

• Phase 1: In-depth coverage of the types, severity signs and symptoms of chronic mental illnesses, and the medications used to control the illness with their sometimes devastating side-effects.
• Phase 2: A full day of visits to various local mental health facilities, where officers and citizens with mental illness can interact one-on-one or in-group discussion when neither is in a crisis situation.
• Phase 3: The acting out of real-life situations either by role playing, videos or personal testimonials from experienced officers family members, and most importantly, persons with mental illness permits the critiquing and sharing of techniques to learn the most effective ones.
• Phase 4: "Ride-alongs” that pair mental health professionals with experienced officers, to help break down barriers of misunderstanding that may exist between the two systems.

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Click here to watch a story on CIT from KKTV in Colorado Springs.