Jonathan C. Clayfield

Development and Validation of the Mental Health Attitude Survey for Police

Police officers often lack sufficient mental health training and knowledge of mental illness to manage the risks associated with emotionally disturbed person (EDP) encounters. Still, it is not clear how much mental health training police officers actually need and, to date, there are no measures for police departments to use to determine officer attitudes toward dealing with EDPs. This led to the development of the Mental Health Attitude Survey for Police (MHASP), a modification and compilation of previously developed and newly developed items, which can be used to measure the effectiveness of mental health crisis training curricula in improving police attitudes toward persons with mental illnesses. A sample of 412 police officers from a major city police department in the northeast anonymously completed the MHASP. The results provide good evidence that the MHASP is a reliable and initially validated measure of police attitudes toward persons with mental illnesses.

E Pluribus Unum: Creating a Multi-Organizational Structure for Serving Arrestees with Serious Mental Illness

Large numbers of adults with mental illness detained by police, seen in the courts, and confined in prisons and jails has been a longstanding concern of officials in the mental health and criminal justice systems. Diversion programs represent an important strategy to counteract the criminalization of persons with mental illness. The challenge is to identify and integrate resources in such a way that an organization bridging the police, courts, mental health, substance abuse, homelessness, welfare and entitlements agencies would evolve that would effectively and appropriately serve offenders with mental health issues, keeping them stable in the community and reducing recidivism.