Protecting the mental health of Maryland police officers
Photo by raymondclarkeimages with Flickr Creative Commons License
BY JACOB STEINBERG
ANNAPOLIS, Md. Maryland police officers who are dealing with stressors such as family issues, substance abuse or mass protests will have access to confidential mental health aid under a bill progressing in the state Legislature.
The Police Officers Mental Health Employee Assistance Program, sponsored by Del. Benjamin Brooks, D-Baltimore County, and Sen. Mary Washington, D-Baltimore, would require each law enforcement agency to provide its officers with access to an employee assistance or mental health program at a minimal cost to the officer.
Gail Daumit, MD, MHS, FACP
Dr. Gail Daumit is the Samsung Professor of Medicine in the Division of General Internal Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Vice Chair for Clinical and Translational Research in the Department of Medicine. She is the director of Johns Hopkins NIMH ALACRITY Center for Health and Longevity in Mental Illness, as well as a practicing general internist, epidemiologist and mental health services researcher whose work is devoted to improving physical health and decreasing premature mortality for people living with serious mental illnesses. Her current projects the ALACRITY Center and a newly-funded NIH project named DECIPHeR focus on testing implementation strategies to scale up evidence-based interventions to decrease cardiovascular risk for people with serious mental illness in community mental health settings. Dr. Daumit’s clinical trial of a behavioral weight loss intervention for persons with serious mental illness, the ACH