A bill sponsored by Indiana’s two Senators aims to improve the quality of life for police officers. The Law Enforcement Mental Health and Wellness Act passed the United States Senate unanimously last week. It was spearheaded by Sens. Todd Young and Joe Donnelly.
“It enables us to provide a crisis hotline for our officers. It allows us to work with our doctors in places like Knox, where we’re able to sit down with them and tell them about the special challenges that police officers face, and then together what we try to do is make their lives a little bit better and to make sure that someone’s there for them if they’re feeling a little bit challenged,” Donnelly explained during an appearance on WKVI’s “Grossman in the Morning” last week.
He adds the bill provides a dedicated support system for the men and women in blue.
“They can call a crisis hotline and there’s somebody there to talk to them. There are peer mentoring programs, so we set up programs that they can talk to other officers to try to deal with the mental health challenges that they have.”
Donnelly says the bill also addresses training for doctors and other mental health professionals.
“Our officers go into places and see things and have to deal with things we can’t even dream of. It’s not necessarily known by everybody about the horrible things that they have to see and work with on a regular basis, and we want to make sure that those who talk to them on a mental health manner understand where our police officers are coming from.”
The bill now goes to the House of Representatives for consideration.
