Virtual Hallucinations gets into mind of mentally ill

SCRIPPS HOWARD
MEMPHIS, Tenn. -- The Memphis Crisis Intervention Team was the first of its kind in the country, beginning in 1988 as a collaboration between police and mental-health officials after several violent confrontations.
Since then, 500 or more cities have copied the model, and departments as far away as Australia have shown interest.
Last month a group of police officers training to assist mentally ill subjects were seeing things and hearing voices themselves.
It was all to a good end -- to help them avoid misunderstandings that can lead to deadly confrontations when they encounter a distraught and frightened mentally ill person.
Wearing goggles and earphones hooked up to software called Virtual Hallucinations, the officers were able to see and hear what a schizophrenic person might experience -- disembodied voices and visual hallucinations.
The technology was made available for training to Crisis Intervention Team officers from the Memphis Police Department and other agencies.
The mentally disturbed person "is experiencing something that is very threatening," said Maj. Sam Cochran, who runs the CIT program.
"Maybe he is not seeing me as a police officer but as a devil ... or the voices are telling him not to believe me," Cochran said.
There are about 220 Memphis officers trained as CIT specialists, and they get about 12,000 calls a year. This is in addition to their regular responses to calls for service.
In one virtual-hallucination scenario, the officers were able to see how a simple bus ride might seem to a mentally disturbed person as a scary event.
The experience becomes ominous as voices come out of nowhere, terrifying and confusing. Nonexistent people pop up, then disappear. At one point, a motorcyclist pulls up alongside the bus and starts yelling in a threatening manner.
"It's total overload," said Terry Winders, a CIT officer in training.
"It's the best tool for understanding what the person is seeing and hearing," Winders said. "The last thing they need is someone yelling and screaming and making it worse."