The OSU Center for Health Sciences has been awarded a federal grant to offer mental health awareness training to first responders.
The $375,000 grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration will cover three years of the "Finding Hope" project. Part of the training will teach police, firefighters and paramedics to recognize and respond to mental illness and substance abuse.
"What does it look like when someone’s psychotic? What does it look like when someone is high on methamphetamine? How do you deal with somebody who is hearing voices or having delusional thinking?" said OSUCHS Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences Chair Dr. Jason Beaman.
The training will also teach first responders de-escalation techniques and where they can refer those with mental illness for treatment.
Beaman said there’s a real need for police to increase their mental health awareness.
"We do have a lot of mentally ill individuals in Tulsa and northeast Oklahoma that do not have access to care and aren’t receiving the care that they need. It dramatically increases their chances of intersecting with the health care system in the law enforcement setting," Beaman said.
First responders can be certified in mental health first aid after the training. The goal is to get more people into treatment rather than having them end up in jail.
"This falls right in line with our priorities of providing mental health education to the community. It’s something that we hope to do long term, but this grant allows us to build our foundation and begin to experiment with different types of training and education," Beaman said.
Youths and young adults will be emphasized in the training. According to the Tulsa Mental Health Plan, almost 8% of Tulsa area youth have a serious emotional disturbance. Three-fourths of mental illnesses appear by age 24.
