Mental Illness In Law Enforcement

There are approximately 324,707,000 million legal U.S. citizens as of October 2016. According to the mental illness statistics about 26.2 percent of the American population ages 18 and older, in other words, one in four individuals suffers from either one or more of the 200 classified forms of mental illness. With the population of individuals with mental illness being larger than the population of law enforcement, and having 200 classified forms of mental illnesses. This “special population” is challenging to maintain, because law enforcement are not fully trained oh now to handle all of these mental illnesses. Mental Illness are disorders that affect your mood, thinking and behavior, some examples of the most common mental illnesses are: anxiety/panic disorder, bi-polar disorder, depression, eating disorder, schizophrenia, substance abuse/addiction, i.e. While some of the most uncommon mental illnesses are: Capgras Syndrome, Fregoli Syndrome, Cotard Delusion syndrome, Reduplicative Parmnesia Syndrome, Alien Hand Syndrome, i.e. As you can see some of these disorders maybe common to everyday individuals, but how can police officers serve and protect society when they are unaware of some of these mental disorders. Those in law enforcement can only go through so much training to learn how to handle and deescalate confrontation with an individual who …show more content…
April