Mental health issues are not always something people talk about.

But what happens when a person is having a mental health crisis and authorities need to be called?

In Carbon County, there are specially trained individuals in the criminal justice system to try and help these people in their time of need.

On Friday, the first graduating class of the Carbon-Monroe-Pike Crisis Intervention Team in Carbon County since before the pandemic, was held at the Emergency Operations Training Center following a 40-hour course.

Five individuals, ranging from police officers to social workers, completed the training to join the Crisis Intervention Team. They include: Samantha Blum of Center for Community Resources, Emily Borger of Pocono Mountain Regional Police, Joel Gulla of Lehighton Borough Police, Jonathan Porcano of New Perspectives and Jared Soto of the Carbon County Public Defender’s Office.

“This is a huge step in a positive direction, not only for the mental health community, but the law enforcement community and the community in general,” said Tiffany Rex, Carbon-Monroe-Pike Mental Health/Developmental Services outreach coordinator and CIT coordinator. “These people spent five days together, learning about each other, about the resources that they have to offer, learning about the resources the community has to offer in order to work together to create a safer community, safer network when responding to things.”

Things discussed in the training included Carbon and Monroe resources like hospital crisis responses, what it looks like when a police officer brings someone into the hospital on a mental health crisis, resources that can be found in each of these counties for mental health services, drug and alcohol services, children and youth, aging services. They also completed mental health first aid training, and did a psychosis overview of the signs and symptoms of an individuals who is struggling with mental health psychosis.

“It’s basically building a complete network and making sure that everybody is connected,” Rex said, noting that the overall goal of the CIT is to provide access to resources, reduce recidivism, provide help without causing more trauma in the situation, keep the officers and community safe and build a strong community core group.

“The Crisis Intervention Team is only as strong as our community, and the only way that we’re going to grow our community and grow this network and make it stronger is to help our law enforcement and individuals dealing with mental health and substance abuse issues by being a part of these trainings, being a part of committees and being a part of our team.”

Soto, who serves as a social worker in the public defender’s office, said that this training helps puts mental health crisis in a different perspective, especially for law enforcement responding to an issue.

“I see this as a good opportunity for more collaboration going forward and now we have a better understanding, no matter what discipline that we come from, on how we can best respond to people with mental health, substance abuse or a combination of both, going forward.”

Soto said that this team training provided participants with important resources as well, including data sheets, how to assess situations, building a network to help the person in crisis and working through the criminal justice system.

Bill Parish, CIT coordinator, and Jennifer Williams, Carbon-Monroe-Pike Mental Health/Developmental Services deputy administrator, congratulated the five for completing the training and stressed the importance that this training will provide to help in a crisis situation. The groups partnered with the district attorney’s office for the training.

Jack Soberick, county detective for the DA’s office and a former police chief, said that this program is needed in Carbon County because mental health and substance abuse problems are growing.

“We became police officers because we want to help people,” he said. “This is the step that I think was missing.”