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. 2022 Sep 29:5:100099.
doi: 10.1016/j.dadr.2022.100099. eCollection 2022 Dec.

Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) training and impact on mental illness and substance use-related stigma among law enforcement

Gilbert A Nick  1   2 , Sharifa Williams  1   3 , Helen-Maria Lekas  1   4 , Kerstin Pahl  1   4 , Chloe Blau  1 , Don Kamin  5 , Crystal Fuller-Lewis  1   4
Affiliations

Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) training and impact on mental illness and substance use-related stigma among law enforcement

Gilbert A Nick et al. Drug Alcohol Depend Rep. .

Abstract

Limited empirical data and research exists about stigmatizing attitudes and perceptions held by law enforcement officers towards persons with mental illness and substance use issues. Pre- and post-training survey data from 92 law enforcement personnel who attended a 40-hour Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) training was used to investigate training-related changes in mental illness stigma and substance use stigma. Training participant's mean age was 38.35 ± 9.50 years, majority white non-Hispanic race/ethnicity (84.2%), male gender (65.2%), and reported job category as road patrol (86.9%). Pre-training, 76.1% endorsed at least one stigmatizing attitude towards people with mental illness, and 83.7% held a stigmatizing attitude towards those with substance use problems. Poisson regression revealed that working road patrol (RR=0.49, p<0.05), awareness of community resources (RR=0.66, p<0.05), and higher levels of self-efficacy (RR=0.92, p<0.05) were associated with lower mental illness stigma pre-training. Knowledge of communication strategies (RR=0.65, p<0.05) was associated with lower pre-training substance use stigma. Post-training, improvement in knowledge of community resources and increases in self-efficacy were significantly associated with decreases in both mental illness and substance use stigma. These findings highlight the existence of stigma related to both mental illness and substance use pre-training suggesting the need for implicit and explicit bias training prior to the start of active law enforcement duty. These data are consistent with prior reports indicating CIT trainings as a path to address mental illness and substance use stigma. Further research on effects of stigmatizing attitudes and additional stigma-specific training content is warranted.

Keywords: CIT; Crisis intervention team; Mental illness; Stigma; Substance use; law enforcement.

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Conflict of interest statement

None of the authors have any conflicts declared.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Brief measure of stigmatizing attitudes and perceptions toward people with mental illness or substance use issues.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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