Opinion: Frustration, few options for neighbors helping someone in crisis

The community needs to figure out how to offer more options to help those in mental health distress, the author writes. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

Emily Hebbron

Hebbron is a member of Common Ground, a Presbyterian Church (USA) congregation, and serves as one of its leaders. She lives in Portland.

I was picking up dinner from our favorite neighborhood restaurant on my way home from work when I encountered the man. It was 6:30 and I really wanted to go home and have a quiet evening with my family after a long day at work. But instead, I was confronted by the man in front of the restaurant having a very scary, very public severe mental break.

He was beating a tree with a small foam baseball bat, shouting at people and throwing a bag of corn flakes everywhere. His belongings were strewn across the sidewalk along Woodstock Boulevard. He was out of control, incomprehensible and aggressive.

Another customer dining outside with his family angrily confronted the man. A young child started crying. The several tables full of people who were dining on the sidewalk quickly took their dinners to go. The owner of the restaurant stood there, scared, tired and frustrated. She needed help, so I stayed with her.

I kept my distance from the man and stood tall, my officious-but-meaningless work badge still around my neck. I calmly and firmly told him that he needed to stop and move away. My heart pounded with anxiety, but I knew that if he could feel safer, we would too.

After a few minutes, he calmed down. He sat on the sidewalk and even smiled, but his mental distress was still obvious.

And now what? The employees at the restaurant said they had called the crisis line but received no help. A neighbor passing by mentioned that the man trashed his front yard earlier in the afternoon. This man clearly needed help, and so did the restaurant and the neighborhood.

I thought of my kids, who just started 5th and 9th grades. They take TriMet to get home from school every afternoon, and both have encountered people in crisis while commuting. I believe that it’s important for them to learn independence and resourcefulness, but I’m less sure of the lesson on how to navigate space with an adult in crisis.

At some point, someone must have called 911 and the police showed up. It wasn’t what we wanted, and I don’t believe it’s what was needed. But having only really started, we were already out of options. We spent 30 minutes helping to de-escalate the situation, but the second the police stepped out of their vehicle, all of that was lost, and they knew it. The man was again out of control, even worse than before. And we were still out of options.

I stood there with the restaurant owner and the police officers, and we watched - none sure what to do, all feeling dejected. The man weaved around on the street next to traffic, eyes wide, shouting at anything, everything. The police officers calmly stayed and waited. I helped them carefully collect the man’s things into a bag, and the restaurant owner swept up the sidewalk and cleared the plates from patrons who fled their tables. I went into the restaurant and picked up my family’s dinner and went home.

This was a tragedy – one that is repeated constantly across our city. A living performance of our collective failure to find a better way. We watch over and over, and we still don’t know what to do. Amidst a plague of such despair, can we find the creativity, energy and compassion to expand our options and do better? We must find a way, with the hope that something might be better than today’s near-nothing. That hope matters for the life of our city and people, and it’s needed now more than ever.

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