Preventing The Next Virginia Tech -- The National Behavioral Intervention Team Association Launched Today

Main Category: Psychology / Psychiatry
Also Included In: Mental Health
Article Date: 16 Jan 2009 - 0:00 PDT

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Today marked the launch of the National Behavioral Intervention Team Association.

NaBITA's mission: The National Behavioral Intervention Team Association (NaBITA) is committed to providing education, development and support to professionals in schools and in the workplace who endeavor every day to make their campuses and workplaces safer through caring prevention and intervention.

NaBITA is a state-of-the-art resource for protecting schools, colleges and workplaces from threats and violence. School shootings are ever more frequent. Workplace violence is commonplace. Yet, violence is often preventable. Those who intend to act with aggression frequently give signs and clues to what they are planning. In the wake of increasing shootings and violence across the country, behavioral intervention teams have been formed at thousands of schools, colleges and workplaces. These teams are the best chance we have of identifying individuals who are headed toward crisis, and averting that crisis.

As these teams have become rampantly popular, they have reached a point of critical mass. At such a point, an association is needed as a hub around which a new field can coalesce. That point is now. That hub is NaBITA (http://www.nabita.org).

NaBITA is an independent entity created by a team of mental health experts, prevention specialists, educators and attorneys who are well-known and respected in their professional circles. One of the creators, Brett A. Sokolow, Esq. of NCHERM (http://www.ncherm.org) was asked why he helped to found NaBITA. He replied,"Two years ago, our firm was a small law and consulting firm. The events of Virginia Tech catapulted our CUBIT behavioral intervention model to national prominence, and we are no longer a small firm. We have helped to form teams on over 200 college campuses. NaBITA is our way of giving back. We're creating an intentional, supportive community. We'll nurture it until it is self-sustaining, and then let it grow of its own inertia as it fulfills its mission of fostering enduring models that result in safer campuses, workplaces and schools."

Executive Director W. Scott Lewis, JD added, "One of my priorities with NaBITA is to ensure a high level of actual deliverables to the membership in the form of support, education, research, models, and resources. It's a value-added model at a level that is uncommon for membership associations."

NaBITA was the brainchild of NCHERM Executive Director Cori Sokolow, who said, "I initially expected that NaBITA would be a resource for colleges and universities. I did not anticipate that it would have a broader reach, but it makes sense. Essentially, there are three NaBITAs -- one for colleges and universities, one for K-12 schools, and one for corporations/organizations. All of these entities have behavioral intervention models, so they all need an association to call their own."

NaBITA

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