National Alliance on Mental Illness

Voiceover

00:00

This is The Beat—a podcast series that keeps you in the know about the latest community policing topics 

facing our nation.

Kimberly Nath

00:09

Hello and welcome. My name is Kimberly Nath and, on behalf of the COPS Office, I would like to 

introduce two people with NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness: Ron Honberg, Director of 

Policy and Legal Affairs and Laura Usher, CIT Program Manager. NAMI is a non-profit organization 

devoted to addressing the stigma of mental illness to ensure the decrease of barriers to treatment and 

recovery. NAMI is the nation’s largest grassroots mental health organization dedicated to building better 

lives for the millions of Americans affected by mental illness. Ron and Laura, thank you so much for 

joining me.

Ron Honberg

00:43

Our pleasure.

Laura Usher

00:43

Thank you, Kimberly.

Nath

00:45

Can you tell me a little about NAMI and your work there?

Usher

00:41

Sure. So as you said, NAMI is the nation’s largest grassroots organization dedicated to building better 

lives for people living with mental illnesses and their families. We do a lot of different work. We kind of 

try to approach that from every angle. So we do education programs for individuals and for families and 

for community members. We do support groups, we do legislative advocacy. And we build partnerships 

at the local and the state and the federal level with all sorts of partners: law enforcement, mental health 

provider agencies, community groups, faith groups. You know, we try to reach out as much as possible 

to the community to help build awareness about mental illness and help to improve lives for people.

Nath

01:33

Great. And, Ron, your role is?
Honberg

01:36

I’m the director of our policy team. We do work at the federal level as Laura said. We do a lot of work at 

the state and local levels too on a range of issues, mental health issues. But over the years, we’ve been 

very, very involved in working with law enforcement and with other professionals in the criminal justice 

system because they’ve really had to bear such a burden of responding to people with mental illness in 

crisis who don’t get timely mental health treatment.

Nath

02:05

Exactly.

Honberg

02:05

And we’ve really always appreciated, though, the kind of partnerships that we’ve had with law 

enforcement around the country. They’ve been some of our strongest allies.

Nath

02:13

Speaking of that, given that police are often the first responders when a person is in psychiatric distress, 

what do you think that law enforcement could do differently to decrease the problematic interactions 

with people living with mental illness?

Usher

02:27

Well the first thing that they could do is create some strong partnerships at the local level with their 

mental health provider agencies, with their hospitals, and with their local NAMI affiliates. Because 

usually there are solutions to these problems but it’s a systemic problem. Everyone around the country 

is experiencing this. And the only successful approach we’ve seen is really a strong partnership at the 

local level. We would also really encourage police to take some time to personally interact with people 

who live with mental illness. Take time to talk to them and find out about their stories and what works 

for them in a crisis and what doesn’t. We find that when police do have that interaction, a lightbulb kind 

of goes off in their minds and they realize that these are folks who really need help and that police are in 

a great position to help them and that can really make a big difference in their life in the long term.

And the last thing that I would encourage law enforcement agencies to do is to look at crisis intervention 

teams. This is really an approach that brings together law enforcement, mental health provider 

agencies, and local NAMI affiliates to kind of problem solve around how to respond to mental illness 

crisis in the community and what kind of training to provide to officers so that they’re better equipped 

to respond to these situations safely and humanely. And we’ve found that CIT, Crisis Intervention 

Teams, is very successful. There are 2,800 programs around the country and these programs are really 

helping to reduce the use of force in these interactions, they’re helping to reduce the number of arrests 
and increase the number of people who are getting successfully referred to mental health services 

rather than going to jail.

Honberg

04:06

Police—just to add something very quickly—police who’ve actually been through this training actually 

say that it not only helps them respond to people with mental illness, it helps them respond to a whole 

bunch of situations that may be unpredictable and difficult to deal with and that they feel safe in their 

jobs and far more confident in their jobs as a consequence.

Nath

04:28

I know you’ve done a lot of work around trying to address the stigma surrounding individuals living with 

mental illness. Could you tell us about some of the difficulties or obstacles that people living with mental 

illness are facing right now and how you’re working to help destigmatize mental illness?

Honberg

04:43

Well you know there are really two types of obstacles that people with mental illness face. Some are 

attitudinal. You know, we’ve made progress in educating the community about mental illnesses and 

destigmatizing these illnesses but we still have a long way to go. We still don’t talk about mental illness 

in the same way we talk about heart disease, cancer, diabetes, etc. So, much work has been done but 

still needs to be done to better sensitize communities and people about mental illnesses.

And people with scary sounding diagnoses like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are people like 

everyone else and they can and oftentimes do recover if they get the kind of services and supports that 

they need.

The other types of barriers that people encounter are systemic. You know, mental health systems that 

really frequently wait until people are in acute crisis before they respond. If we had a system for 

responding to heart attacks in this country that waited until somebody fell over with an acute heart 

attack, there’d be a lot more people dying. But that’s how our mental health system works. We don’t 

think about prevention, we don’t think about early intervention. We wait until a crisis occurs. That’s 

when it’s most difficult to respond. And then we don’t provide services after the crisis is alleviated. So 

that’s what we need to do and that’s frankly why the police have had to assume such a burden.

Usher

06:04

And I would say on the how we are responding or how we are trying to break down the stigma of some 

of these barriers, again we’re doing a lot of public awareness, you know everything from PSAs and 

education programs, we’re doing a lot of public awareness. We do a lot of partnering as I said, I think 

before, not just with law enforcement but with community groups, with faith organizations, with 

multicultural communities.
Honberg

06:29

Schools. Right.

Usher

06:31

Schools, just trying to reach as many people as possible so that they learn about mental illness and they 

learn about some of the resources that we have available to help them.

Honberg

06:38

The administration really had the right approach after Newtown in recognizing that really to address 

these problems required a community-wide response. And so we really need to engage groups like the 

Boys and Girls Clubs and you know, the colleges and universities and schools and the civic organizations 

and the churches to find solutions to these issues and to interject some compassion in the way we 

respond to people with mental illness.

Usher

07:04

One of the programs that NAMI does that’s so effective, I think, in breaking down the stigma is called In 

Our Own Voice and it’s a public presentation given by two individuals who are living with a mental 

illness. And they sort of, in a structured way, they talk through their story about, you know, the difficult 

times, what happened when they were in crisis, what helped them, how they’re coping, and then what 

their hopes and dreams are for the future. I think a lot of people when they hear this story told in sort of 

a hopeful way, they find for the first time they realize that mental illness is not a hopeless diagnosis. So 

they’re willing to talk about not just other people with mental illness but themselves and their family 

members.

Honberg

07:50

I’ve talked to police officers after they’ve heard one of these presentations who’ve said, you my only 

experience with mental illness has been with people who were in crisis and it was so educational and 

uplifting for me to hear a presentation by someone who is really doing well and who can actually inspire 

others and work with others on recovery. I think it’s always important to remind the audience how 

important it is for the law enforcement community to work with us on getting more funding for mental 

health services and, you know, that ultimately the solutions lie in better treatment and services for 

people. We’ve really asked law enforcement to take on a role they were really never meant to take on.

Nath

08:33

What do you think we can learn from incidents such as the Newtown tragedy to help assist police chiefs 

and officers in preparing responses to mass causality incidents?
Usher

08:42 

So I think that there’s a couple things. Obviously, in preventing these kinds of incidents, I think that one 

of the things we’ve learned is that there needs to be more awareness of mental illness and some of, 

kind of, the signs to look for. And there needs to be capacity for the system to respond before there is a 

crisis because there are always warning signs. There are always symptoms leading up but often no one 

notices until the person is really in an acute situation. And I think also that we’ve learned is that there 

needs to be a lot of outreach and support for families because usually families are the ones who are 

noticing the behavior’s getting strange or there is a problem but they don’t always know where to reach 

out for help or if they do, the services aren’t very effective.

In terms of what police chiefs can do after a tragedy, I think we’ve learned that it really is, there’s a 

community-wide impact from these kinds of incidents so it really requires the whole community to 

come together and work together and the community leadership, including the police chief, to model 

good help seeking behavior, to really kind of help to control some of the broader impact on the 

community. We’ve heard from communities where these incidents have occurred that, there’s not just a 

burden from the traumatic incident and witnessing that, but there’s also the burden of the media and 

the well-wishers and the donations and the welcome coming from multiple sources and multiple strings 

attached creates a lot of pressure on the community. And there are lots of services for lots of different 

people that need to be provided. So I think this really does require a lot of leadership and a lot of 

collaboration and the willingness to reach out and ask for help and try to find the resources in your 

community and outside of your community that can help guide through this difficult situation.

Honberg

10:27

We tend to think of police officers as almost super human. They don’t experience the same sort of 

trauma as the rest of us do. And I think when you talk to officers and chiefs and communities that have 

had these kinds of horrendous mass casualty events, you find out that while the officers may not 

actually reach out and talk about what they’re feeling or seek help, their trauma and the manifestations 

of their trauma surface over time. And the more timely a helpful environment can be created, the more 

officers can be encouraged to come forward and seek help, the more the community can think in terms 

of providing support to the officers and to others who are impacted. You know that’s going to help the 

community return as quickly as possible to some degree of normality even though, obviously, it’s a very 

difficult thing.

Nath

11:16

Well thank you very much. Well, unfortunately, we are out of time, but before we end here today, can 

you tell people where they can get some more information on mental illness and NAMI?
Usher

11:26

Sure. You can go to www.nami.org for more information about mental illness. And if you’re specifically 

interested in crisis intervention teams, you can go to www.nami.org/cit. You can also call our national 

information helpline at 1-800-950-NAMI. That number is open during regular business hours and it’s to 

provide information and resources to anyone affected by mental illness whether they be an individual, a 

family member, a service provider, a police officer, or community member. And we are happy to help 

anyone.

Nath

12:07

Perfect. Thank you so much for your time.

Usher

12:09

Thank you. This has been a pleasure.

Voiceover: The Beat Exit

12:16

The Beat was brought to you by the United States Department of Justice, COPS Office. The COPS Office 

helps to keep our nation’s communities safe by giving grants to law enforcement agencies, developing 

community policing publications, developing partnerships, and solving problems.

Voiceover: Disclaimer

12:32

The opinions contained herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official 

position or polices of the U.S. Department of Justice. References to specific agencies, companies, 

products, or services should not be considered an endorsement by the authors or the U.S. Department 

of Justice. Rather, the references are illustrations to supplement discussion of the issues.