"Has anybody ever had a panic attack?" she asks.
Corbin, the director of the county's Crisis Response System, is leading a Mental Health First Aid class at the police department's Davidsonville academy. As part of their in-service training this year, all county police officers must complete the eight-hour course.
About 300 county officers have completed the course, said Lt. Ryan Frashure, an agency spokesman. By the end of the fall, each of the nearly 700 officers in the department will have finished it.
An 11-year veteran of the force assigned to the agency's financial crimes unit, who requested not to be named, sits near the center of the room. He says he has had a panic attack.
"It feels like you're dying," the detective says, recounting his experience.
Lt. Steve Thomas, who is instructing the course along with Corbin, then offers a personal experience. It came after an incident in March 2000 when he and another officer shot and killed a robbery suspect in Brooklyn Park.
Thomas didn't fire his weapon again until that fall at the county's range, where he had an episode, he said.
"The first time, I froze," he said. "I didn't realize it, but it was a panic attack."
The officers at the training academy completed four hours of training on Monday. On Tuesday, they learned how to deal with people after traumatic events and anxiety symptoms.
As a national conversation about mental health has emerged in the aftermath of mass shootings in recent years, this is just one of a number of steps the county has taken in an effort to confront the issue head-on.
County police have been particularly affected. In recent years, the agency has partnered with licensed clinicians to create the Crisis Intervention Team. They've also formed a peer support group to help officers following particularly traumatic calls.
But even with the department's increased focus, dealing with individuals suffering with mental illness remains unpredictable.
'We could have done some stuff differently'
On the morning of Sept. 19, county police officer Cpl. Sam Brown, a 23-year veteran of the force, responded to a call at a Linthicum apartment building. Brown already had completed the Mental Health First Aid training.At the apartment building, Brown encountered 38-year-old Brian Jerome Preissler. The front part of Preissler's head appeared to have been shaved in random spots, according to redacted police reports provided by the agency.
Neighbors told the officer Preissler was acting increasingly erratic after his wife recently left him and complained he had burned a lawn chair on a grill, according to the reports.
Brown found a smoldering pile; however, Preissler denied burning the chair. At the officer's request, Preissler poured water on the smoking pile. Despite the pleas of two neighbors, Brown left.
Neighbor Esther Beach said last month she warned the officer, "He's going to set the house on fire."
As Brown was leaving, Beach and another neighbor began arguing with Preissler, who became agitated. Preissler allegedly said people were going into his apartment and he purchasing the building the day before. Brown returned and asked Preissler to go to his apartment and advised the neighbors not to argue with him, the police report said.
Brown left — only to return a few hours later to find the building in flames.
This time, he saw Preissler lying on the ground licking the concrete and drinking water runoff as firefighters fought the blaze, according to the police report. Brown and another officer witnessed Preissler making "incoherent, inconsistent excited utterances," the report states.
The officers placed a hood on Preissler as he made several attempts to spit on them while they took him into custody, the report said. He was taken to Baltimore Washington Medical Center in Glen Burnie for an emergency evaluation and later charged.
The fire caused about $500,000 in damage to the building. Nine residents, who were home at the time, were able to escape unscathed. However, two firefighters received minor injuries fighting the blaze. In all, about 20 people were displaced.
Preissler was indicted by a county grand jury earlier this month on more than 30 charges, including first-degree arson, malicious burning and reckless endangerment. He is scheduled to appear in county Circuit Court on Monday, according to online court records.
When asked about Brown's interaction with Preissler, county Police Chief Timothy Altomare conceded that "I think we could have done some stuff differently, and we're taking a look at it."
Altomare could not comment on Brown's assignment following the fire, or whether the officer faces disciplinary action in light of the incident. He reiterated the department's commitment to the training.
"The goal there is to minimize the chances, as much as humanly possible, that a person with mental health issues crosses the line and becomes an imminent danger to cops and other citizens," he said.
Altomare compared the department's strategy to dealing with individuals with mental health issues to a pot of boiling water.
"The key is to see the water start to boil," he said.
An empathetic approach
Back at the police academy, officers are gearing up for an exercise to simulate the mindset of a person suffering from schizophrenia.The officers to listen to a recording of random voices, which alternate between sounding like something out of The Exorcist and Glinda the Good Witch from The Wizard of Oz, while reading a fact pattern from a sheet of paper. Then, they answer questions about what they read.
In reality, nearly every person the police deal with on a day-to-day basis, if not suffering from a mental illness, is in the midst of some kind of turmoil, Thomas said.
"Whenever you're dealing with the public, a lot of people are in a crisis one way or another," he said.
A personal crisis can mean different things to different people, Thomas said. For an exceptional student, it may be getting a bad grade on a test. For a promising athlete, it may be getting cut from a team, he said.
Whatever the crisis, it tends to have an effect on people's mental health. Mental Health First Aid training is designed to help police de-escalate situations and recognize symptoms of mental illness, Thomas said. If police officers are able to recognize the symptoms, they can use the Crisis Intervention Team to follow up on an individual.
"That's something that a patrol officer can't do, but a CIT officer can," Corbin said. "That's really what's going to save this county in the long run is making sure there is that follow-up care."
Under the training, officers are instructed to take an empathetic approach by listening to individuals' problems and concerns nonjudgmentally. Officers are also instructed to ask pointed questions about whether individuals are thinking about harming themselves or others.
"It can be considered a crime prevention," Thomas said, "(but) we'll never know."
Expanding services
Mental Health First Aid originated in Australia. It was brought to the U.S. in 2008, according to the police department.Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia police provide the eight-hour training to recruits in their police academies. Overall, about 20,000 police and corrections officers and other public safety personnel throughout the country have received the training.
The county first used the program two years ago when it trained all its school resource officers. This summer, all county school nurses received the training, Corbin said.
The cost for all officers to receive the training is about $10,500, said Adrienne Mickler, director of the county's Mental Health Agency.
"We're trying to give police more tools instead of taking a person for an emergency evaluation to the hospital or arrest them and take them to jail," Mickler said.
The Mental Health Agency oversees the county's Crisis System and Crisis Warmline, a hotline for those in need of help, and serves as a conduit for people seeking help for mental health issues and services provided by county departments and community providers.
Over the past decade, the amount of funding for direct services in the public mental health system has quadrupled from $15 million to $60 million annually. In addition, there is additional federal, state and local grant funding available for supplemental services like the Mobile Crisis Unit and Crisis Intervention Team.
Mickler attributed the growth to heightened national awareness to mental health issues. He estimated that the agency interacts with around 50,000 people a year through its Crisis Warmline, some 13,000 of which are ultimately linked to local services through the public mental health system.
Around 18 percent of the adult population suffers from some form of mental illness. Only about 40 percent of those individuals seek help each year, said Kate Callahan, an adult after-care specialist with the Mental Health Agency.
There are about 500,000 Anne Arundel residents.
Mary Whitehouse, program manager of Adolescent and Child Family Services for the county's Department of Health, said mental health workers are more adept at spotting those needing help.
"It's in everybody's face now," she said.
Two years ago, Adolescent and Child Family Services expanded to include mental health services for children as young as 4. The department has seven full-time therapists who frequently see children for attention and anxiety disorders and disruptive behavior — often linked to a traumatic event, Whitehouse said.
In the last fiscal year, the department served about 425 children, she said.
While outpatient services for mental illness in the county have expanded in recent years, Baltimore Washington Medical Center continues to have the only in-patient mental health unit with 14 beds in Anne Arundel. In a meeting with the Capital Gazette's editorial board on Thursday, BWMC CEO Karen Olscamp said there was probably a need for more beds in the county and readmittance of mental health patients is high.
To try to deal with the issue, the hospital has made an effort to provide follow-up care to patients after they've been discharged, she said.
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