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10/9 Change Your Mind: Living With Mental Illness - changing the police response

The North 103.3 | By Lisa Johnson
Published October 9, 2015 at 10:07 AM CDT
Christiaan Tonnis/Flickr

Are we substituting jails for insane asylums in America?

Jackie Buffington-Vollum is a UMD Sociology professor who says a conservative estimate of the rate of serious mental illness in the jails is 16%, compared to 1-3% in the general population.

Buffington-Vollum is also a mental health CIT trainer (Crisis Intervention Team) and she just finished the first training for the Duluth Police Department.

Already, she says, officers are letting her know it's made a positive difference.

The Mental Health Week on KUMD was made possible in part by the Human Development Center, Miller-Dwan Foundation and the St. Luke’s Foundation.
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Public Affairs Northland Morning Interviewsmental illnessMental Health WeekChange Your Mind: Living With Mental IllnessJackie Buffington-Vollum
Lisa Johnson
Lisa Johnson started her broadcast career anchoring the television news at her high school and spinning country music at KWWK/KOLM Radio in Rochester, Minnesota. She was a reporter and news anchor at KTHI in Fargo, ND (not to mention the host of a children's program called "Lisa's Lane") and a radio reporter and anchor in Moorhead, Bismarck, Wahpeton and Fergus Falls.Since 1991, she has hosted Northland Morning on KUMD. One of the best parts of her job includes "paying it forward" by mentoring upcoming journalists and broadcasters on the student news team that helps produce Northland Morning. She also loves introducing the different people she meets in her job to one another, helping to forge new "community connections" and partnerships.Lisa has amassed a book collection weighing over two tons, and she enjoys reading, photography, volunteering with Animal Allies Humane Society and fantasizing about farmland. She goes to bed at 8pm, long before her daughter, two cats, or three dogs.
See stories by Lisa Johnson
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