Scenario Based Mental Health and De-escalation Training

Police and protective service officers often find themselves in situations where they are responding to an individual who is, or appears to be, mentally ill.  These interactions often lack understanding between both parties, making it more challenging to produce positive outcomes.

Created by ProTraining, Scenario-Based Mental Health and De-escalation Training is an award-winning course designed to help officers refresh skills in the areas of expressed empathy, effective verbal and non-verbal communication, and de-escalation in order to improve the quality and safety of interactions with individuals who have, or may have, mental health issues. Using interactive scenarios and ‘lived experiences’, this course engages learners at critical decision points to demonstrate how responses and behaviours can defuse an interaction, improve a subject’s cooperation, and decrease the need for force.

This course is the first Unit in a three Unit mental health training system, created from evidence-based research conducted over a 5 year period at the University of Alberta.  See www.protraining.com for more information about Unit 2 (Hands-on Scenario Based Role-Play) and Unit 3 (Advanced Health Crisis Negotiation).

Learning Objectives

Upon completion of this course you will be able to:

• Demonstrate de-escalation strategies that focus on defusing the situation in a mental health crisis
• Demonstrate non-escalation strategies to prevent situations from becoming escalated
• Demonstrate optimal verbal communication techniques that emphasize active communication
• Demonstrate optimal non-verbal communication techniques that focus on proper body language
• Demonstrate empathy, recognizing  emotions others are feeling and responding appropriately to quickly establish trust
• Demonstrate strategies for responding to specific mental health behaviors
• Demonstrate strategies for follow up, and prevention of reoccurrence