New mandatory mental health crisis training now required for all Ontario police officers

Ontario police officers are now required to complete new mental health crisis training and the curriculum was developed by a Wilfrid Laurier University reseracher.

The program is called the Mental Health Crisis Response (MHCR) Education and Applied Training program and it was created by Jennifer Lavoie, an associate professor of psychology and criminology at Wilfrid Laurier University. She designed the program to help officers better respond to the growing number of mental health calls.

"Since COVID, we've seen higher and higher rates of those calls coming in," Lavoie said, adding that this training is about "reducing the use of force in resolving escalated mental health crisis situations, where that's possible, and then responding in a more compassionate way"

Jennifer Lavoie, a crimino