Guest Moderator - Brine Hamilton, CHPA

Special Guests - Joel Lashley, Gary Klugiewicz

Today, the largest institution in America for the treatment of mentally ill people is the Los Angeles County Jail, followed by jails in New York and Chicago. How is it that we wound up housing our mentally ill and cognitively disabled people in jails? Is it just a fact of life that mentally ill and cognitively challenged people commit more crimes than healthy and neurotypical people, so they end up in jail? …Or is the answer more complex?

In addition, emergency rooms absorb around 12 million mental health emergency visits a year. These visits can be not only enormously costly but largely ineffective, due to a lack of training by clinical staff to manage their patient’s mental health needs.

In this episode Brine talks to Gary and Joel about how and what kind of trained techniques can have a positive impact on an institution's collective response to a critical incident.

Some key takeaways from the discussion will include:

- The role of a special management team comprised of various professionals in responding to crisis situations within an institution and how consistent interdepartmental training is crucial to achieve a positive outcome

- How treating individuals with dignity by showing them respect keeps everyone safer

- Why employing "Non-Escalation" can be as important as "De-Escalation"

- Using empathy - what is the other person's reality vs. your own - is essential when communicating with someone in severe crisis