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Kudos, Alcona County, for mental health training

“Understanding can overcome any situation, however mysterious or insurmountable it may appear to be.”

— Norman Vincent Peale

The U.S. Department of Justice, in a 2017 paper, estimated that mental health issues are five times as common among men and women in jails or prisons as they are among the general population. The study said more than a quarter of jail inmates had serious psychological distress and nearly half had a history of a mental health problem.

Such issues can cause a whole host of other problems, the researchers found. Inmates with a history of mental disorders or psychological distress were more than twice as likely as other inmates to be written up or charged with assault while incarcerated.

Corrections officers in county jails and state and federal prisons encounter the effects of behavioral health problems on a daily basis, and understanding those illnesses can help officers respond appropriately to protect themselves and their fellow officers, other inmates, and the inmate who’s acting up.

That’s why we say kudos to the officials from Community Mental Health for training they provided last week to officers who guard inmates at the Alcona County Jail. And we say kudos to the county and the county sheriff for taking advantage of that training.

It is important work that benefits everyone, and we hope such training happens regularly throughout our region.

On another note, the very need for the training highlights the stressful and dangerous situations in which our corrections officers regularly find themselves.

And we’d like to say thank you to all of those officers for the bravery they show in performing such an important community service.

(THE ALPENA NEWS)

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