Keweenaw Report Your Source for Local News and Sports
May is Mental Health awareness month, and the Houghton Police Department wants to spread information regarding mental health.
“Within our police department, we deal a lot with mental health. We help support people with mental health crisis, so it’s something that’s very important for us to educate people about, and we want people to know that we are there for them in crisis [situations], and we can help support them. There’s a lot of stigmas that we’re trying to break when it comes to mental health and people in crisis, and we want to educate people” – Lieutenant Nicholas Roberts, Houghton Police Department.
The Police department works directly with various local resources, such as Copper Country Mental Health, Dial Help, and our hospitals, and are trying to better these resources.
They face challenges such as psychiatrist shortages, which is present throughout Michigan.
The department will go through training to help learn how to de-escalate crisis situations. This type of training is now at the forefront of their overall training, which is a somewhat new occurence.
