Meth heads and mental illness

 Recently I had a situation involving an individual that was trying to come off of some meth I believe that he had taken in the last few hours or so. he was in what psychologist would refer to as a state of excited delirium. It's when someone is extremely hyper or excited but they're also delirious. This can be a very dangerous situation for both the individual and those around them, and often it falls on police and security to deal with them. This wasn't the first time I've delt with someone in this state and it probably won't be the last, but I made me want to talk briefly about law enforcement and mental.

Most law enforcement officers today receive some sort of training in how to deal with mentally ill or high individuals. Usually, this training will tell you to do everything you can to not go hands-on with the individual. You should try to get them to calm down as best you can and avoid restraining them unless you have to. I think this training is good and it makes sense, but it can be difficult to take these lessons and then apply them to really life situations. It's best if you can have an actual mental health professional there to assist, but I've rarely ever had that luxury. 

In this last case I had to sit with the individual for a very long time, and I actually did have someone trained in mental health with me. The mental health professional was able to keep him relaxed for a very long time until finally and unexpectedly he snapped. At that point I had to physically restrain him to keep him from hurting himself or others, and it was kind scary. I didn't want to hurt him, and thankfully I didn't, but I also didn't want him to hurt me or anyone else either. I guess the only thing I'm trying to say is you can have all the training in the world, but sometimes it doesn't matter. Training can always get better, and you could always use more resources, but at the end of the day sometimes you have to do the hard thing.