He Had a History of Mental Illness

Once again someone purchased a bunch of weapons and a whole lot of ammunition and killed a lot of people, the most recent in Santa Monica. The mainstream media reported that the killer had a ‘history of mental illness.’ What happened was happening again just like it did at the Clackamas Town Center in Oregon, Newtown, Connecticut and Tucson, Arizona where Representative Gabrielle Giffords and at least 17 others were shot when a gunman opened fire outside a supermarket.

In all of these circumstances, there were indications that the perpetrator had a potential for violence, but either nothing could be done (until he harmed someone) or everyone ignored it.

When I sat down with members of our mental health community including the Crisis Intervention Training Steering Committee and Bend Police Chief Jeff Sale I asked what we could do to help make our community safer from a potential of violence.

While our local law enforcement professionals have plans and training to respond once a violent incent occurs, there are too many barriers that keep them from identifying and helping people with mental illness and a potential for violence. Because of legal roadblocks there is a minimal amount of sharing of information among community resources even when individuals are indentified as having a high potential for carrying out a mass shooting or incident in our community and particularly our schools.

Chief Sale reported that there is something we can do and should do. He and his staff put together a comprehensive Proposal for Prevention of Violent Incidents. The proposal aims to improve the dissemination and/or sharing of information between community partners to better identify and provide intervention to youths prior to incidents of violence.

Currently, authorities are successful in responding to violence after it occurs. But response to violence is only part of the solution; steps must be taken to prevent violence in the first place. The challenge facing communities is how individuals, who pose a potential risk, can be identified early and services put in place to reduce the likelihood of violence and ensure public safety.

The solution requires a collaborative effort to establish interagency information-sharing programs. These programs can provide multidisciplinary, multiagency approaches to comprehensively address problems posed by juveniles and young adults who are at risk of or who have already committed serious delinquent or criminal acts. This group can then identify these individuals in crisis at a very early stage and use collective resources to improve their lives and minimize the risk of violent incidents.

Information-sharing programs also allow agencies to enhance partnerships to better serve these same youths, their siblings or their families, and to reduce a duplication of efforts. Successful programs have been established nationwide through group formation, overcoming disclosure restrictions and developing an effective evaluation process. Initially, community stakeholders come together to identify group goals, agencies’ functions, level of information to be shared, and available resources.

Implementation of a program in Deschutes County would be most successful with participation from several partners including hospitals, mental health agencies, law enforcement, schools, department of human services, juvenile community justice, district attorney’s office and local committees, such as the Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) and Safe School Alliance (SSA).

The Greater Bend Rotary Club has committed to helping kick off the program with a donation to bring a national consultant to Bend who can give our community an overview and assessment of our community’s challenges in establishing proactive communication and exchange of information as outlined in the Proposal for Prevention of Violent Incidents document.

In addition, Terry Schroeder, the supervisor of the Community Assessment Team, Psychiatric Security Review Board for Deschutes County Behavioral Health, is working with a local Suicide Prevention Task Force to addressing this critical issue.The Security board has placed suicide prevention as one of the priority issues facing the county.

The Crisis Intervention Training steering committee has received support from the Deschutes County Safety Committee to move forward with a grant proposal for a federally funded program enhancement that will result in a CIT coordinator to assist in continued development of officer training and coordination efforts.

Terry reports that there is an opportunity to link these two efforts at some point to work with youth in transition programs as a target group. It is this group that is often identified with both an increased risk of self harm and potential violence risk to the community.

Terry and her assessment teams are continuing to work to advance awareness of prevention and intervention efforts in the community.

All of these efforts are slated to make our community a safe and secure place to live.