Better understanding: Ames police complete mental health training

Jan. 15--While mental illness is not in and of itself a police problem, officers are being called on more and more to help manage people with mental health issues, a psychologist told officers from the Ames Police Department during a mental health training session Wednesday.

Ames police have brought in Philip and Paul Ascheman, a father and son psychologist team from Des Moines, to lead half-day mental health training sessions with all officers this week.

"We have officers that are really good with mental health stuff because they've dealt with a lot of those calls and they're almost self-taught,"said Ames Police Cmdr. Geoff Huff. "This is an opportunity, though, for us to get professionals in to make sure we've all got that baseline understanding."

State law mandates all law enforcement officers must complete four hours of mental health training, plus at least one additional hour of mental health training every year.

This week's sessions are "awareness level training," Huff said, that teaches officers about different types of mental illness, as well as facts and myths about mental illness, so officers are better equipped to recognize mental health situations when they respond to calls for service.

"It's not necessarily going to change our procedures, but recognizing that someone may either be in crisis or have mental health issues, may help (officers) deal with that person better," Huff said. "What it may change is the resources we try and get them in touch with."

Philip and Paul Ascheman are the police psychologists for the Iowa State Patrol and a number of other law enforcement agencies in the Polk and Story County areas.

Philip Ascheman has been in private practice since 1991 and started working with law enforcement agencies about the same time. Paul joined the practice last year.

"People with mental illness have become problematic in law enforcement interactions," Philip Ascheman said Wednesday during a break between training sessions.

"We're trying to make sure the officers know better ways, better strategies to deal with these folks to help safeguard them and keep them safe in the community, but also to make sure that the law enforcement officers themselves are not putting themselves or anybody else at risk by going too far with it."

He said the training teaches officers communication tactics and ways of identifying mental health disorders "so they have a better chance of using effective strategies."

"I think that the officers already do an excellent job in most communities of managing people with mental illness," Ascheman said. "This is to give them additional strategies."

Police can become a fallback for people with mental health issues, Huff said, and these training sessions give officers a better level of understanding.

"People with mental issues are not violent most of the time, it's a very small subset," Huff said. "Generally, when we're dealing with people with mental health issues, it's because they're in crisis, something has gone wrong for them.

"This gives officers a point of reference to say, 'I've seen that before, now I understand why the person was behaving the way they were behaving.'"

___

(c)2015 the Ames Tribune, Iowa

Visit the Ames Tribune, Iowa at www.amestrib.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC