Some signs police look for in psychiatric crises

Police officers who receive crisis intervention training are taught how to recognize when someone with serious mental illness might be having a psychiatric crisis. Considering the overall circumstances, police look for these behaviors in a subject:

- Behavior that doesn’t fit the circumstance (example: laughing at a funeral)

- Non-verbal and easily distracted

- Bizarre and disjointed thinking (delusions, hallucinations)

- Suicidal

- Normal coping skills are failing or not evident

- Unaware of self; dirty, disheveled, malodorous

- Unaware of surroundings and possible risk to personal safety

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Source: Donald Kline, Montgomery County Emergency Service in Pennsylvania