Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Officers get inside view of mental illness

A man with paranoid schizophrenia teaches them how to better work in crises with mentally ill people.

By TAMARA EL-KHOURY
Published October 4, 2006

LARGO - Johnny Limbaugh apologized to a roomful of about 30 law enforcement officers for being late Tuesday morning.

"I kind of forgot. I'd like to blame it on the voices, but it's my fault," he joked.

Then he told them that he first tried to commit suicide at age 5.

That he had been raped.

That his delusions are real.

That the voices in his head tell him to rot in hell.

Limbaugh, who suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, has been dealing with police officers for years.

For a long time, the confrontations were terrifying. But that started to change after Limbaugh became a guest speaker for the Crisis Intervention Team program. That was in 1999, when the National Alliance on Mental Illness brought the program to Pinellas County.

In the past seven years, the 39-year-old Largo man has trained more than 600 officers from five counties. They come to the program for 40 hours of specialized training to help them respond to calls dealing with mentally ill people.

Last week, Limbaugh's efforts were recognized at the National CIT conference in Orlando where he was given the 2006 National CIT Consumer of the Year Award. For the mental health professionals in the program, a consumer is someone with a mental illness.

Limbaugh said he has been taken in for a mental evaluation under the Baker Act more than 100 times. The law allows law enforcement officials to take people to the hospital for the evaluations if they are likely to cause harm to themselves or others because of mental illness.

Early on, Limbaugh said, officers usually handcuffed him, didn't talk to him or tell him where he was going, making the situation more traumatic.

He wants to prevent a situation like the time several police officers surrounded him with guns drawn after he called 911 for help. He was going to swallow a bottle of pills so the hospital would admit him.

"I'm a grown man sitting on the side of the street, holding a Sylvester stuffed animal and a bottle of pills," he said.

But after he gave his first presentation, the officers in attendance applauded. And he's seen a difference in the way police have responded since the CIT training.

"When a person is in a psychotic place and they're hearing voices, having delusions, you don't want to just grab them," he said.

Four years ago, Limbaugh had a psychotic episode and called 911, yelling about the voices in his head and delusions he was having.

The dispatcher kept him on the phone and dispatched a sheriff's deputy who took the time to talk to Limbaugh and calm him down.

"I've got to get to the safe place. They won't leave me alone," Limbaugh said he told the deputy over and over again.

Limbaugh said the deputy calmed him down, reassured him he was going to a safe place and talked Limbaugh through each step they would take before getting there.

"Instead of taking me to the closest receiving facility, he took me to Suncoast Hospital," said Limbaugh, a supervisor at a Bealls department store.

Now, Limbaugh said, he's more apt to call for help and isn't as fearful of police.

"It's really just how you handle the person and how you talk to the person," Limbaugh told the audience. "They're still humans and they're going through a lot of fear."

Law enforcement officials said hearing a different point of view is invaluable.

"It gives you some insight," said Pinellas County sheriff's Sgt. Rachel Hughes. "Slow down, talk to them and that you can reason with them."

From Limbaugh, she said she learned to acknowledge that someone is hearing voices or having delusions, not to agitate them by saying the voices aren't real.

"It's all about education," Hughes said.

[Last modified October 3, 2006, 22:43:31]