Northeast State Community College faculty member Andrea Amos has received a top award from the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) Tennessee for her efforts in introducing a training program that helps law enforcement officers and first responders effectively assist individuals
in a mental health crisis.
The announcement came during NAMI Tennessee’s annual state conference in Nashville.
“Andrea was instrumental in revitalizing the CIT program in Washington County,” said Kim Rush King, statewide CIT Coordinator for NAMI Tennessee. “Her leadership and dedication to implementing CIT is admirable, and she uses the skills she has learned with every call she takes as a dispatcher. Her willingness to educate other first responders is to be commended.”
CIT is a community-based program that brings together first responders, mental health professionals, advocates, people living with mental illness and their families, and other partners to improve community responses to mental health crises.
Amos is an assistant professor of College and Lifelong Learning at Northeast State’s Behavioral and Social Sciences Division. She recently graduated from the Bristol Police Department’s Citizen Police Academy and is a CIT Coordinator in East Tennessee. Amos is also a part-time dispatcher with the TRI Regional Airport Authority Public Safety Department.
“Many thanks to the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund and our grant staff, first and foremost,” Amos said. “The Mental Health for Law Enforcement grant helped re-establish what is known as CIT in our area, and the First Responder Award was part of a service-learning mission to fill that need. Crisis Intervention Team training began in Memphis in 1988, growing into a 40-hour training enhancing the knowledge of mental health resources and de-escalation for persons in crisis.”
Through Amos’ efforts to bring CIT training to Northeast State, roughly 86 law enforcement officers, first responders, dispatchers, and mental health professionals in a nine-county region have successfully completed the 40-hour training in mental health response. Earlier this summer, Andrea enlisted the efforts of NAMI Tennessee’s CIT program and CIT International to get a train-the-trainer course.
“It has been an honor to work with Workforce Solutions here at Northeast State to get Continuing Education Credits for attendees and Northeast State’s Police Department, who were instrumental in obtaining POST certification for the course. The team here on our campus and in our community truly made this happen, and I am forever grateful for the support. I am honored to receive the award,” Amos said.
NAMI Tennessee assists communities and law enforcement agencies in establishing CIT programs at no cost through a grant from the Tennessee Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuses Services. NAMI Tennessee is grassroots, non-profit, self-help organization made up of people with mental illness, their families and community members.
Original source can be found here
Alerts Sign-up