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