And persons suffering from mental illness have very limited resources in Belize. Many times, the police are called when they have violent episodes. That had led to deadly incidents in the past. But since then, the police department has undergone training to be better equipped to deal with these types of distress calls. Minister Musa told us more.
Kareem Musa, Minister of Home Affairs
"As you may recall we had an incident on the swing bridge I believe about a year ago. Since then, we have collaborated with the Ministry of Health, them taking the lead, along with the Ministry of Human Development and training such as these, as we speak right now, Christa Courtenay is training our police officers in terms of crisis intervention, so there is a CIT crisis intervention team that will be formed by the police department in how to treat cases like that and so moving forward we can see how steps are being made, not just in terms of a multi-department, multi-ministerial approach, along with the Ministry of Health, they have the database of the individuals and they are ensuring they are tracking them and ensuring that they are receiving their requisite medication if need be and then in terms of crisis intervention, trainings such as these are extremely important for the police officers."
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