Preparing for the Unimaginable: How Chiefs Can Safeguard Officer Mental Health Before and After Mass Casualty Events

By Laura Usher, Stefanie Friedhoff, Maj. Sam Cochran and Anand Panaya, MD

• The frequency of casualty events continue to increase. There were 372 mass shootings in the United States in 2015.

• There are more than 900,000 sworn law enforcement officers now serving in the United States, which is the highest figure ever.

• This study was created in response to the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut. The five year anniversary of that tragedy will occur in December 2017; this title will publish the following month.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
• Release date: Jan 16, 2018
• ISBN: 9781510726253

Laura Usher

Laura Usher is the manager, criminal justice, and advocacy with National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). Usher served for eight years as NAMI’ s program manager for crisis intervention teams (CIT) and has assisted law enforcement agencies nationwide in improving responses to people in the community experiencing mental health crises. Usher is also the coauthor of numerous reports, including Responding to Youth with Mental Health Needs: A CIT for Youth Implementation Manual, Grading the States 2009: A Report on America’ s Health Care System for Adults with Serious Mental Illness, and State Mental Health Cuts: The Continuing Crisis. She has served on numerous advisory panels on policing and mental illness for the Police Executive Research Forum, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, and The Arc.