Dr. Chris Lloyd began teaching in the social work department at UA Little Rock in the fall of 2007. Dr. Lloyd’s specialities in the classroom include research methods, parenting, and assessment and differential diagnosis. In the field, Dr. Lloyd has been working for the past two years with Arkansas’ law enforcement officers since being recruited to teach about personality disorders as well as substance abuse and co-occurring disorders.
He has been recruited to help facilitate the National Alliance on Mental Illness’s (NAMI) Crisis Intervention Program (CIT), a government-mandated intervention that informs police officers and sheriff’s deputies about how to engage and respond to individuals with mental health and substance abuse problems. The officers are drawn regionally each month from nearby departments, and Dr. Lloyd travels across Arkansas to these regions to teach two hour sessions that prepare these professional to assess potentially volatile situations and to intervene in a manner that promotes deescalation and personal safety.
Dr. Lloyd describes the CIT Program as “a mix of knowledge and vocabulary and very practical, very applied, advice.” While he sees the program as effective with those who are excited about the material, it’s proved to be challenging to engage those who are apprehensive about participation in the program.
