Md. Campus Safety Professionals Undergo Mental Illness Training

BALTIMORE — Campus police departments from nine Maryland colleges and universities participated in mental illness training Monday to help officers recognize and appropriately respond to students with mental health issues.

Sponsored by the National Alliance on Mental Illness, the daylong training resulted from an incident that occurred at Morgan State University last year, where 22-year-old  student Alexander Kinyua brutally beat a young man on campus. Weeks later, he dismembered his roommate and ate the victim’s heart and brain. A judge recently declared Kinyua not criminally responsible due to mental illness, The Baltimore Sun reports.

During the training, which was held at Towson University, participants role-played with some pretending to be dealing with mental illness. Additionally, attendees also experienced the Mindstorm psychosis simulator, which offers users a peek into the mind of someone who is hallucinating.

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