Crisis Intervention Team (CIT): A model multi-agency collaboration between law enforcement, advocacy, and mental health communities to promote improved health outcomes for individuals with mental illnesses

Law enforcement officers are often first responders to emergency crisis situations involving individuals with mental illnesses, and as such, can be viewed as gatekeepers to the criminal justice and mental health systems. However, officers receive very little training on mental illnesses and are often unequipped to handle such situations appropriately. To improve officer and patient safety, enhance access to mental health services, and promote treatment instead of incarceration when appropriate, thereby improving health outcomes, the Memphis model of the Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) program was developed. The widely and rapidly disseminated program, which includes a 40-hour training component for law enforcement officers, has quickly become an exemplary collaboration between the law enforcement, advocacy, and mental health communities. This presentation will provide an overview of the CIT program by examining its training component and summarizing other core elements. The presentation will especially highlight CIT's tenet of community partnerships as illustrated in Georgia and its commitment to community-based participatory research designs. Key early research findings of the Georgia CIT program provide preliminary support for the effectiveness of CIT in several domains, such as self-efficacy, preferred social distance, and use of force across an escalating crisis situation, illustrating CIT as an important model of collaboration between community mental health providers, health services researchers, advocates, and law enforcement/public safety professionals.