Mental Health Association of Portland

Peter Courtney on Wednesday, February 6th, 2013 in a press release says, “Statistics indicate that one in eight children, and one in 18 adults in Oregon suffers from mental illness.”

Do one in eight Oregon children and one in 18 adults suffer from mental illness?

By Aimee Green, The Oregonian, Feb. 7, 2012

HB 4022 seeks to define heroin addicts as mentally ill for the purpose of committing them. (Photo: CGehlen/Flickr.com)

Prosecutor Ryan Lufkin is scrambling for ways to combat the disturbing number of people who die each year from heroin overdoses. Lufkin started documenting the sad circumstances of each of these deaths in Multnomah County and has a binder full: 52 in 2010, and at least 70 in 2011.

The threat of jail – and court orders to attend drug treatment – just isn’t doing the job.

Today Lufkin will urge legislators in Salem to consider expanding the definition of the mentally ill to include heroin addicts, paving the way for the state to hold a hearing to “commit” or force repeat users into inpatient or outpatient drug treatment within days of arrest, before they’re released from jail.

Prosecutors say the current system of sentencing heroin addicts to drug treatment at the time of conviction fails because months can pass between arrest and conviction as many addicts skip court dates.

HB 4022 would finance drug treatment with state money that now pays for jail time — about $93 a day.

The measure would apply at first only to those who’ve been arrested with two prior heroin-possession convictions within the last five years. In Multnomah County, where more than half the state’s heroin overdoses occur, that would affect about 16 people a year.

The legislation wouldn’t solve the shortage of inpatient beds, but Lufkin hopes that addicts will get immediate help – such as outpatient treatment and methadone –while they wait for an inpatient bed.

The bill is opposed by some public defenders, Disability Rights Oregon and ACLU of Oregon.

Alex Bassos, training director for Metropolitan Public Defender, commends prosecutors for trying to prevent overdose deaths, “but the way they have written this particular statute is a criminalization of civil commitment in a way that is horrifying and probably unconstitutional.”

Bassos said if the state is going to force someone into treatment outside the criminal justice system, it should do so based not on criminal history, but based on evidence that the person is likely to overdose in the near future.

Lufkin says the legislation goes out of the way not to punish heroin addicts, instead it aims to quickly get them the help they need. Lufkin said that during a civil commitment hearing, the state would still need to prove the person was likely to continue to put themselves at risk of deadly overdoses without drug treatment.

Over the past few years, Lufkin has compiled a binder documenting the people who died from overdoses in the state’s most populous county. They range widely in age, income and education –even the college educated fell victim to the drug.

Many were discovered flat on their faces next to a brown-tar-like substance and a syringe – the powerful central-nervous-system depressant knocked them unconscious within seconds.

Many died at home, but some were found in some very public places: a downtown sidewalk, a field next to a North Portland elementary School, the restroom at a Safeway in the Hawthorne district or Panda Express on North Lombard Street.

Lufkin shows the binder to heroin users, to drill home the message that they’re on a deadly path.

“Frankly, (the number of deaths) is becoming so overwhelming that I’m going to have to start another binder,” Lufkin said during the sentencing earlier this week of a Gresham drug dealer who sold a Troutdale man a fatal dose of heroin last summer.

Regardless of how the bill fares, all parties agree it highlights the need for solutions.

“I don’t know when our community is really going to figure out how many we have dying and how little resources we have devoted to it,” said Multnomah County Judge Michael McShane, who sentenced the Gresham drug dealer to about 6 years in prison. While not speaking specifically about the bill, McShane shares Lufkin’s frustration.

“It sounds like he’s talking to the wind sometimes,” McShane said.

According to statistics from the Oregon State Medical Examiner, the number of heroin-related deaths dropped from 127 in 2009 to 90 in 2010. Figures for 2011 aren’t yet available.

But Lufkin says authorities in Clackamas and Washington counties tell him anecdotally they’ve seen an upswing. And if Multnomah County’s deaths are any indicator, he suspects the state may see an increase once again.

Lane County trainings are a response to Oregon's high rates of suicide, which are 40 percent higher than nationally. (Photo: Toffer Surovec/Flickr.com)

By Matt Cooper, The Eugene Register-Guard, Jan. 29, 2012

Volunteer Steve Shaffer knows that the people who use emergency shelters on freezing nights need a warm meal and a place to sleep, first of all.

But he also sees that some of them may have deeper issues — stress, depression, mental disorders, substance abuse. Without help, they can become suicidal.

Shaffer, a 58-year-old investment banker from Eugene, has taken training to learn how to be that help. He thinks everybody else should, too.

“(Suicide) has touched everybody’s life, I’m sure,” Shaffer said. “The first thing you think about is, could I have recognized this coming on, could I have done something different?”

Faced with a high rate of suicide, county mental health experts want to train more people from all walks of life how to recognize and help those who are suicidal.

It’s like cardiopulmonary resuscitation, said Sandy Moses, Lane County’s suicide prevention coordinator. “The more people that know these basic skills, the more we can save lives,” she said.

The suicide rate in Lane County was 19.1 people per 100,000 in population in 2009, the most recent numbers available, according to the Oregon Public Health Division.

The county’s suicide rate was about the same as Oregon’s, which was 40 percent higher than nationally and on a rise that started in 2000.

There are more deaths due to suicide each year in Oregon than due to car crashes, the division said.

Identifying factors in the county that lead to suicide is the “question of the day,” Moses said. They include depression, mental illness, stress and access to firearms — and that’s where health officials are focusing efforts.

In 2006, the county began receiving federal suicide-prevention funding through the Garrett Lee Smith Memorial Act, named for former U.S. Sen. Gordon Smith’s 21-year-old son, who died by suicide in 2003.

The county is using the money to raise public awareness about suicide through traditional and social media and to dramatically increase prevention training sessions.

Since 2008, the county has more than doubled public trainings for suicide prevention and mental health. Last year, it held 21 sessions, some of them in schools, and 500 people attended, Moses said.

One of the biggest challenges to suicide is overcoming the stigma associated with suicidal thoughts and discussion of suicide.

Two-thirds of those who died by suicide showed warning signs to family and friends, according to the Lane County Prevention Program. But experts say it can be frightening to hear that someone wants to die, and that can lead to denial by people who might otherwise be able to help.

“We know suicide is a public health issue and we realize that … the public just is not aware of the risk factors, the warning signs, what all of us can do to help,” Moses said.

During a recent public training session at Lane Education Service District in west Eugene, Moses taught a group of social workers and others the basics of a program called QPR, which stands for question, persuade, refer. Trainees learned how to question someone who is considering suicide, persuade them to get help and then refer them to the appropriate resource.

In one role-play exercise, participants practiced asking one another whether they were considering suicide. The exercise is meant to ease the discomfort some people feel around even uttering the word “suicide,” especially with someone who is considering it, Moses said.

Trainee Claire Davis, a 54-year-old program supervisor with the Birth To Three parenting program, will share the training with the program’s parent educators who work with families.

Birth To Three families are often under significant stress, dealing with suicide risk factors that can include anxiety, postpartum depression, chemical dependency, money worries and childhood abuse, Davis said.

People don’t ask whether someone is considering suicide, she said, “because they don’t want the answer. I want to make sure that if we ask the question, we’re ready with what to say and what to do next.”

Youth especially can be susceptible to suicide.

Suicide is the second leading cause of injury death among Oregonians ages 10 to 24, after car crashes, Moses said. In a 2010 Oregon Student Wellness Survey, 9 percent of eighth-graders said they had attempted suicide in the past year.

Britni D’Eliso, a spiritual mentor with Hosea Youth Services of Eugene, said many youth served by the organization come from broken homes and consider suicide to be “an option.”

D’Eliso, 23, works with youth ages 16 to 22 who sometimes show the warnings signs for suicide — prior attempts, social isolation and depression, for example.

She took the training because she wants to be comfortable approaching an uncomfortable subject.

“It’s a taboo topic in our society,” D’Eliso said. “I think people are uncomfortable with death in general, so self-afflicting (death) is that much more extreme.”

SUICIDE By the Numbers

Suicide rate per 100,000 in population for:

• Lane County: 19.1 in 2009 (67 total)
• Oregon: 16.8 in 2009 (641 total)
• United States: 12.0 in 2009
• World: 16.0, varies by year depending on country

Note: Under Oregon law, deaths under the Death with Dignity Act, which allows terminally ill Oregonians to end their lives through the voluntary self-administration of lethal medications expressly prescribed by a physician for that purpose, are not considered suicides.

Source: Oregon Public Health Division

PREVENTION TRAINING

Lane County will provide training in suicide prevention and mental health first aid

Suicide Prevention: Free from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday at Lane Council of Governments, 859 Willamette St.; free from 10 a.m. to noon Feb. 10, Lane Education Service District, 1200 Highway 99N

Mental Health First Aid: 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Feb. 23-24, Lane ESD , $45 per person

Registration: To attend a training, register at http://preventionlane.eventbrite.com.  Community groups, faith communities, schools and others can email prevention coordinator Sandy Moses to schedule a training  at Sandy.Moses@co.lane.or.us. For further information, call 541-682-3650, email Sandy Moses, or visit http://www.preventionlane.org.

Need Help?  Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 800-273-TALK (8255)

By April Baer, OPB News, October 13, 2011

Portland police spokesman Lt. Robert King (Image: April Baer)

First responders in the Portland metro area say they’re concerned at the number of suicides in recent weeks.

Thursday, police, fire, EMS and suicide prevention groups gathered on Portland’s waterfront.

Even during their press conference, authorities were responding to a report of a suicidal man on the I-205 bridge.

Officials who gathered said suicide is especially frustrating because it’s preventable.

Lesley Storm’s husband committed suicide twenty-four years ago. Prevention, she says, can take many forms, but must begin with simple interactions.

“It is a myth that people who are talking about killing themselves don’t go through with it. If you hear somebody talking about killing themselves, ask about it. Don’t be afraid to ask,” Storm said.

Last year, 673 people killed themselves in Oregon. That number has been rising steadily over the past three years.

The Oregon Partnership is a non-profit that advocates for addiction treatment and mental health services.

The group says 27 percent of last year’s Oregon suicides were current or former service members.

LISTEN – audio message from OPB News (00:13)

By Corey Pein, Willamette Week, October 12, 2011

It’s poor, it’s dangerous, it’s growing like crazy—and it’s more important than ever.

In case you didn’t get the invite, Portland is an endless party in a shining urban utopia where everyone has a $1,000 bicycle, eats

Guy Dale uses the bike lane to make his way up Southeast 162nd Avenue in East Portland, where it’s not uncommon to see people in wheelchairs using roadways because the sidewalks are inadequate or missing. (Image: Darryl James)

locally sourced gourmet dishes from food carts and is blindingly, self-consciously white. It’s Paris in the 1920s, but with iPhones. Portland is not just a noun, it’s an adjective for good government and livability, smart planning and the next hip thing.

Well, wake up. There’s another Portland you should know about, one unknown even to many longtime locals.

It’s an expanse of the city without a single Zipcar spot or independent microbrewery, where you’ll see more pajama bottoms than skinny jeans. It’s a landscape of chain link and surface parking that, by contrast, makes 82nd Avenue look positively gentrified. It’s a cookie-cutter residential sprawl so devoid of landmarks, public spaces and commercial centers that some residents simply call it “The Numbers.”

It’s where you can walk a quarter-mile without finding a crosswalk (assuming you can find a paved sidewalk). You’d have to go even farther to find a bus stop or MAX station. Forget about a city-maintained bike rack—in 50 square miles, there are only three.

It is, however, the most diverse place in Oregon. You may find yourself struggling to read the signs on local businesses, unless you’re fluent in Spanish or Vietnamese. If you see white people, two things might be true: The trucker hat isn’t meant to be ironic, or they speak Russian.

This place is poor, and relatively dangerous.

Median household income is at least 23 percent lower than in the city as a whole, and the official poverty rates are worse than almost anywhere else in the metro area. Violent crime is up. The mortality rate is the highest in the county.

It’s East Portland, the city’s frontier.

More than a quarter of the city’s residents live here, separated from the rest by Interstate 205, a physical and psychological barrier more divisive than the Willamette River. If East Portland were its own city—and in many ways, it is—it’d be the third-largest in Oregon, with 150,000 people, roughly equal in population to Eugene and Salem.

And now, as the city heads into an election season that will be more competitive than most, and with new attention paid to social disparities across the country, East Portland is emerging as a political force.

All three major candidates for mayor are portraying themselves as the new champions of the neighborhoods east of I-205. New Seasons Market co-founder Eileen Brady promises greater investment in East Portland. Charlie Hales, a former city commissioner, talks about the lack of sidewalks and delivering East Portland its “birthright.” And state Rep. Jefferson Smith (D-East Portland) has beaten the drum for the area since moving there in 2007 to run for the Legislature.

The political attention comes, in part, because East Portland’s problems can no longer be ignored.

“Crime has gone up. The school system does not know how to handle the influx of children of color,” says the Rev. W.G. Hardy Jr., whose church draws hundreds of black families from East Portland. “[Politicians are] talking about livable cities, with modes of transportation—bus, bike, pedestrian, car. But we don’t have that. They’re talking about healthy grocery stores within walking distance. We don’t have that.”

Altruism alone doesn’t explain the mayoral candidates’ new eastward focus. There’s also a stark political cartography.

Centennial Community Association President Tom Lewis says city projects like new parks and bike lanes aren’t always welcomed by longtime East Portlanders who mistrust City Hall. IMAGE: Darryl James

“Even a naive politician has got to admit that 25 percent of Portland’s population is going to have a voice someday,” says Tom Lewis, a carpenter who heads the Centennial Community Association. “They’ve got to go there.”

When he ran for mayor in 2008, Sam Adams won virtually every precinct in the city except for those east of I-205. And he didn’t simply lose in East Portland precincts. In many, he got thumped.

Hales and Brady launched their campaigns against Adams with appeals to those East Portland voters. Now that Adams won’t seek re-election, they’ve held on to their eastside strategy.

That’s why you’ll soon be hearing about East Portland as never before—and why it’s important to understand what is true, and what is myth, about the least “Portlandy” part of Portland.

Lewis steers his work van through the vanished landscape of his childhood. The 60-year-old carpenter, who lives 23 blocks from where he grew up on 171st Avenue, pulls onto Southeast Mill Street, not far from his old family home. The van rolls past a wooden fence bearing a freshly spray-painted welcome: “Fuck U Hoes.”

He is nostalgic. A dance hall where the Kingsmen of “Louie Louie” fame once played is now an unfinished housing development. Lewis circles the cul-de-sac, providing a panorama of brown grass dotted with piles of wire and rubble, and after about a mile, stops at Southeast 136th Avenue and Powell Boulevard.

“Our business district,” Lewis says.

A pawnshop advertises “Cash 4 Guns.” The Pallas strip club offers $3 breakfast all day and a once-over with the metal-detector wand at the door. Roll Your Own Mart offers…well, whatever you need.

The van turns east, toward a ghost mall at the city’s edge. The mall’s former anchor tenant, Safeway, closed in March. The liquor store remains open.

Drink is different here. East Portland has more off-premises liquor licensees than on-premises establishments, while the rest of the city has more bars than grab-and-gos.

Food is different, too, with visible consequences. In an effort to measure the effect of the built environment on public health, Multnomah County culled height and weight data from 74,000 driver’s licenses. It found East Portlanders have higher obesity rates than other city residents—53 percent, compared to 42 percent in the rest of the city. Yet for an area with one-quarter of the city’s population, there are only seven full-service grocery stores in East Portland; fast-food chains and convenience stores predominate. The $1 value menu at 7-Eleven is cheaper than bus fare to the farmers market.

Policy wonks call it a “food desert.”

That phrase does evoke a landscape that fits East Portland, once strawberry fields and horse pastures.

The area sprawled after World War II, with little planning. Most of it was not part of the city until 1983, when Portland began annexing it. The lawyers and surveyors did their jobs in pushing Portland’s boundaries east, but the politicians never succeeded in convincing residents they were wanted by the city that swallowed them.

As other parts of Portland flourished thanks to decades of targeted spending and boosterism from City Hall and corporate leaders,

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2010 Census

cheaper land in East Portland attracted developers who threw up block after block of apartment complexes. A 1996 East Portland planning document presented to the City Council by then-Commissioner (and now mayoral candidate) Charlie Hales accurately predicted the newly annexed areas would grow quickly, but the document’s vision of streetcars, tree canopy and walkable neighborhoods failed to materialize.

Today, nearly half of the city’s multifamily housing complexes are east of I-205, as are more than half of the mobile-home parks.

The challenges facing far East Portland go way beyond the lack of streetcars.

The most obvious problem is transportation, especially when traveling north or south. TriMet runs only one frequent-service bus line in East Portland, the No. 4 along Southeast Division Street, despite growing demand. In 2009, the agency reduced service on one north-south line that serviced the area’s largest employer, Adventist Medical Center.

Here the bike lanes glisten with broken glass. Only 1 percent of East Portland residents commute by bike, compared to 7 percent of Portlanders citywide, a city survey shows. As often as they convey cyclists, the bike lanes are filled with wheelchairs, driven by the disabled and elderly residents of East Portland’s 261 adult-care homes. (There are only 89 adult-care homes inside the city west of I-205.)

Their perilous commutes play out in slow motion alongside five lanes of speeding traffic—de-facto highways designated by the Portland Bureau of Transportation as “high-crash corridors.” Last year, a 62-year-old woman in an electric wheelchair, Melinda Barnett, was hit by a car while traveling from a coffee shop on 162nd Avenue to her home 11 blocks away, following the bike lane on Division Street. Police never found the hit-and-run driver.

The rate of vehicle crashes involving pedestrians on 122nd Avenue is 50 percent higher than the citywide average. Jaywalking is common because the average distance between pedestrian crossings is over a quarter-mile, roughly the distance between Powell’s Books and Big Pink, a stretch of West Burnside Street with eight crosswalks.

“The circumstances we have [in East Portland] are a result of lack of planning. But is there anyone to blame?” asks Shea Marshman, director of planning and research for the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office. “I don’t think so…. It just kind of crashed together like so many other places in the country.”

What emerged in East Portland is what social workers describe as a suburban grid with urban problems.

Rosewood Café volunteer Antwoine Thomas, 23, drew these remarkable pieces in magic marker. Thomas, who says he worked as a dishwasher at the MAC Club before enduring a period of homelessness and moving back in with his mother in the St. John's neighborhood, plans on applying to Portland Community College. He often visits East Portland to spend time with friends he met on the streets downtown, some of whom have been placed into apartments in Illustrations by Antwoine Thomas (http://www.facebook.com/wondonnie)

The area’s growing crime problem is well-known to police, less so to the city at large. Since 2002, the Portland Police Bureau’s East Precinct has responded to more calls for help than any other precinct in the city. In the year ending this August, five of the 10 neighborhoods with the most reported aggravated assaults were east of I-205. Eight of the 29 reported homicides in that period occurred here.

The intersection of Southeast 162nd Avenue and Burnside is consistently among the top three locations for police service calls in the Portland metro area, Marshman says. It’s also where many Portlanders on probation and parole happen to live. “When people here call the police, they’re often calling about someone they know and love,” says Marshman, a former parole officer. “It’s a much worse problem [than the statistics indicate]. It’s a call of last resort.”

An increasing awareness of these problems among elected officials and bureaucrats has created a sense of urgency and a desperation for answers.

Marshman, for example, helped found the Rosewood Cafe, the newest tenant in a small strip development on Southeast 162nd Avenue between Alder and Stark streets. The Rosewood is supposed to be a new community center in a neighborhood that has no center. The cafe has no menu. The water cooler is empty. The furniture consists of flimsy card tables and metal folding chairs, arranged in a semicircle facing a half-painted wall. Handcuffs dangle from the handle of an interior door.

The county spent $14,000 to help create the center, which began as a community-policing initiative, and is intended to help give the area a sense of identity, not to mention a place for neighbors to meet. Public money covers a fraction of the anticipated costs. Earlier this year, volunteers raised $1,000 with a scrap-metal drive.

On a recent Wednesday at lunchtime, about three dozen people have shown up. They include cops, landowners, church pastors, bureaucrats and community organizers, all bearing statistics, speeches and, sometimes, competing agendas.

Valerie Salazar, 34, is one of the few people who isn’t paid to be here. Salazar, a boisterous, unemployed, tattooed and churchgoing single mother from Mesa, Ariz., lives on Southeast 162nd Avenue. For the past week, she has volunteered at the Rosewood Cafe because she wants to help clean up the neighborhood. She also hopes her work will lead to a job.

Salazar surveys the room. She sees a police captain holding a folder stuffed with dossiers on her neighbors. She hears a city crime-prevention officer tell landlords that evicting “problem children” pays “big dividends.” She listens as Marshman asks everyone in the room for money—as little as 15 cents—to keep the cafe open.

Valerie Salazar hopes to turn her volunteer work at the Rosewood Cafe into a job helping victims of human trafficking. (Image: Darryl James)

Salazar says that many on 162nd Avenue are suspicious of the city’s sudden show of interest.

“You’re like, ‘I’m here to help,’” she says. “If you don’t keep your word for these people, they will write you off.”

Growing racial tension compounds the mistrust.

According to census tracts, only the white population in East Portland decreased over the past decade. The Hispanic population grew 106 percent, more than three times as fast as the rest of the city. The black population grew 166 percent, while decreasing 13 percent in the rest of the city.

This is why, five years ago, Rev. Hardy moved his Highland Christian Center from Northeast 18th Avenue to Northeast 76th. He estimates 30 percent of the predominantly black families who attend his church now live in “The Numbers,” having been priced out of the inner city and moved east of I-205, where the welcome has not always been neighborly, and services are lacking.

“Most of them have to commute back into the city to get hair-care products, and connect to people who still remain in inner Northeast Portland,” Hardy says. “Those who cannot afford 24-Hour Fitness, they’re still coming in to go to the Salvation Army on Killingsworth. They still consider PCC Cascade their community college, even though Mount Hood [Community College] is down the street.”

Hardy, a former TriMet employee, moved to The Numbers in the 1990s, to be closer to his workplace. “When I first moved out there, it was strawberry fields. There were nurseries out there. It was rural Oregon,” Hardy says. His family were the only blacks around, except for his neighbor’s maid. Not so today.

All this change matters most to the fastest-growing minority in East Portland: children.

“Massive amounts of kids are moving there, primarily because of rents,” says Scott Stewart, who tracked regional demographic trends for the Portland-Multnomah Progress Board, a study group dissolved by the City Council in 2008. “Think about what that does to the infrastructure of the place,” Stewart says. “There are more kids, and they’re poorer. That’s quite a burden.”

The trend was clear years ago, but little was done. Between 2002 and 2006, enrollment in Portland Public Schools declined 18 percent. In the same period, the school districts east of I-205—David Douglas, Reynolds, Parkrose and Centennial—grew by a combined average of 15 percent.

The eastern districts’ problem is Portland’s as a whole, Stewart says, to the extent that schools are a tool for upward mobility. Failing schools produce an ill-equipped workforce, and the economy suffers.

Perhaps nowhere have these trends been more clear than at Alder Elementary, a Reynolds district school that sits one block south of Southeast Stark Street at 172nd Avenue.

This is not just one of the poorest schools in Portland, but according to annual socioeconomic analyses by the Oregon Department of Education, it has long ranked as one of the poorest schools in the state. In recent years, up to 98 percent of the 600 students enrolled at Alder were eligible for free or reduced-price lunch. Seventy percent are learning English as a second language.

The Police Activities League Youth Center on Northeast 172nd Avenue offers teens and younger children one of the only places to hang out after school in the East Portland area. Center director Britt Fredrickson sometimes sends kids home with food for the weekend. (Image: Darryl James)

While the district as a whole has gotten poorer, Alder’s poverty figures have moderated somewhat. Now Glenfair Elementary, a school on Northeast Glisan Street at 153rd Avenue that draws students primarily from Portland, is Reynolds’ poorest, with 94 percent of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch.

“This whole area out here is looking more and more like Alder,” Reynolds spokeswoman Andrea Watson says.

In a city famous for its public parks, kids who grow up in East Portland have almost no place to play. Schools lock up their swing sets after hours, and remove the nets from the basketball hoops.

The Police Activities League Youth Center on 172nd Avenue offers some of the only after-school activities in the area that would not meet a strict definition of juvenile delinquency.

The center, located in an abandoned school building, has several study and game rooms, but the gym is the main draw. Between 70 and 150 kids use the center every day, depending on the time of year; many stay from the time that it opens at 2 pm until closing at 7 pm, and take an evening meal there—their third publicly funded meal of the day, counting the lunch and breakfast served at school.

“I have kids I send home with food on a regular basis,” says Britt Fredrickson, the center’s director. “I try not to pry too much about where [their parents] get their incomes.”

Many things that East Portlanders gripe about are only partially true. Take sidewalks. A Portland Bureau of Transportation analysis shows that the part of the city with the fewest sidewalks along major arterials is not East Portland but Southwest.

Take parks. A recent analysis by Commissioner Nick Fish’s office of historic Portland Parks Bureau spending shows that between 1990 and 2010, more money was spent acquiring parkland and improving park buildings in East Portland than in any other part of town. (Granted, two-thirds of city-owned parkland in East Portland remains unimproved.)

And as for those infamous food deserts: East Portland has them, but a Multnomah County analysis shows North Portland is still worse off when it comes to finding fresh or natural foods.

For decades, “North” and “Northeast” have been Portland code for African-American. In political rhetoric,  it’s not yet clear what “East Portland” means.

Lisa Bates, a Portland State University urban planning professor who helped plan the city’s new Office of Equity and Human Rights, says all the talk over geographic disparities sidesteps a much tougher discussion. “Talking about institutional racism is alienating. Talking about geography is a lot less alienating,” Bates says. “If you’re running for elected office, speaking to a large group of people”—say, people who consider themselves East Portlanders—“can be very useful.”

New Seasons Market co-founder Eileen Brady has demonstrated some attention to the politics of language. “I’ve committed to never saying ‘out there,’” Brady says. As for why New Seasons has no East Portland locations, Brady says bank financing has proven difficult. “I don’t speak for New Seasons Market anymore,” she says. “We’ve definitely looked for sites in East Portland, but there is none that has worked out yet.”

In a campaign video, Hales promises to deliver East Portland its “birthright” with an increased budget for services. “Let me tell you

The Rosewood Cafe opened next to a Laundromat on Southeast 162nd Avenue this year as a volunteer project to create a community space in a high-crime neighborhood. (Image: Darryl James)

about 117th Avenue,” he says. “There’s a section of that street that goes from Division to Burnside, goes past two schools, a great neighborhood park, a big community church, and connects to light rail. But there are no sidewalks. That’s not OK.”

Jefferson Smith may have the strongest recent record of East Portland advocacy. Although Smith grew up in the Irvington neighborhood of inner Northeast Portland and only moved to his home in the Hazelwood neighborhood in 2007, a year before he ran unopposed for an open legislative seat, he has spent significant time building an image as East Portland’s most prominent political voice.

“There are people with larger cred and a deeper understanding than I’ve got, but I’ve been studying the issues very closely,” Smith says. “Almost every major city works with increasingly diverse communities. Portland is one of the few major cities that haven’t faced that much. We’ve got to be the city that gets that right.”

Back at the Rosewood Cafe, Michelle Phillips and Milton Lopez, who have lived in East Portland for about 15 years, help clean up after the meeting. They share an apartment in the Alder Village complex at 160th and Alder.

“It’s getting really, really rough,” Phillips says. Shots were fired from some nearby apartments three times in one weekend, she says. Then someone threw a rock out a window and hit a friend of hers in the head.

“It’s disheartening,” she says. “I feel like everybody skipped over East Portland.”

Lopez, a carpenter who recently attained U.S. citizenship, stares at the street outside. “The city dumped this on us,” he says. “They put all their money in Northeast, and we don’t get anything. Gresham is doing right by its people. Look at the trees and sidewalks they put in over there. We’d like to see some of that.

“We still love this place,” he goes on. “If we move, it feels like we’re giving up on something.

“Whatever candidate sells us the best story, we’re willing to go out and campaign for them. That’s how desperate we are out here.”

By Maxine Bernstein, The Oregonian, October 12, 2011

A man jumped to his death from the 15th floor of Portland’s Marriott Downtown Waterfront hotel Sept. 5, five minutes after he checked in.

Five days later, a Portland man leaped from the St. Johns Bridge. The next day, police and firefighters were called to the Burnside Bridge for another man who went over the edge. By month’s end, a 44-year-old man died after jumping off an overpass onto the eastbound lanes of Interstate 84.

So far this year, Portland police and firefighters have responded to 55 suicides or attempts — and those are just the cases that play out in public — up from 39 calls in all of 2010. Portland police have been called to a total of 70 suicides and 144 attempts, up from 69 suicides and 129 attempts last year.

The pace has shaken the city’s public safety responders.

“It was like, ‘Here we go again,” said Paul Corah, Portland Fire Bureau spokesman. “It was day after day. We talked, ‘Do we just respond? Do we do anything about it?’ We have a problem out here, and it’s all preventable.”

Thursday, city firefighters and police will stand with families who have lost loved ones to call attention to a growing problem in Oregon. They’ll gather at the harbor wall at Portland’s Waterfront Park, where a 48-year-old Eugene woman plunged to her death Sept. 23 when she drove into the Willamette River.

The number of suicides in Oregon — which has a suicide rate 35 percent higher than the national average — keeps climbing. According to the state’s violent death report, there were 566 suicides in 2008, 641 in 2009 and preliminary figures show 670 in 2010.  The number of calls to Oregon Partnership‘s Suicide Lifeline has risen from 11,303 in 2008 to 19,016 in 2010.

“Oregon’s rate has been consistently higher than the rest of the country,” said Katrina Hedberg state epidemiologist. “We do not have adequate resources to address the problem.”

Horrifying call

Marcy and Steve Wambach got a horrifying call about 8 a.m. in April last year from their son’s girlfriend: Tony had tried to kill himself, and he had been found hanging on the back deck of the Portland house he rented. Tony Wambach, 27, died at a hospital two days later, on April 3, 2010.

Marcy Wambach said her first thoughts were: “What do you do next? How do you go on? ”

Thanks to a Survivors of Suicide support group, Wambach learned she wasn’t alone. Six or seven people were at her first meeting. “I remember thinking there’s a woman who’s been coming here five years. So you do live on. You do figure out how to put it back together,” she said.

Her husband was angry at his son, wanted to know every detail and yearned to figure out why he had taken his life. Marcy Wambach refused to even drive by the house where her son hanged himself. “I felt like knowing didn’t matter because it didn’t change it,” she said.

The parents suspect a relationship breakup contributed to their son’s suicide. He also had struggled with alcohol and crack cocaine use, and had lost his job as a salesman for a cell phone service.

His memorial service at Lincoln Memorial on Mt. Scott drew a large crowd.

“You sit there and think, there’s 300 people here he could have called, but he didn’t. One phone call,” she said.

A handful of friends told her at the memorial they knew her son was hurting. “There were three or four people who said, ‘I wish I would have reached out, and I won’t make that mistake again.’ ”

That’s her message to those who know someone in distress: “Don’t wait, reach out.”

To press forward, the Milwaukie couple bought a nearby house and leased it to Oxford House, which provides housing to former addicts to help them stay clean and sober. Their son had been successful at other Oxford Houses in Portland.

“We wanted to do something to commemorate him,” Marcy Wambach said.

Today, she will join public safety officials. “I really would like people to know there are places you can call,” she said.”You don’t have to go it alone.”

Depression a factor

State officials who track suicides aren’t sure what’s driving Oregon’s rate. “People have said everything from ‘look outside – it’s gray’ to our unemployment rate is higher than the rest of the country,” Hedberg said.

Depression is the largest risk factor. While people usually can manage depression or other mental illness, stress can overwhelm them, experts say.

“Families are under increased financial, employment, housing or global stressors. Even while people may have access to treatment, there are stressors that are causing ongoing instability,” said David Hidalgo, interim director for Multnomah County’s Mental Health and Addiction Services Division.

Marcy and Steve Wambach, who lost their 27-year-old son, Tony, in April 2010 to suicide, purchased a house in Milwaukie about six doors down from their own and leased it to Oxford House, which provides housing to recovering alcohol and drug addicts. Their son had struggled with drug abuse but was successful when he stayed at Oxford Houses in Portland. "We wanted to do something to commemorate him," said his mother, Marcy Wambach. "Somebody else's life may be improved, and that's good." (Brent Wojahn/The Oregonian)

Since 2008, Portland police have been forwarding reports on suicide attempts to the county to ensure the person involved gets care.

While 70 percent of people who killed themselves in Oregon from 2000 to 2006 had a diagnosed mental disorder, alcohol or drug problem, less than a third of men and half of women were receiving treatment when they died. Just over a quarter of suicides involved veterans returning from combat.

The state has issued grants to counties to train adults and youths in suicide intervention skills, support public awareness campaigns and outreach to at-risk populations, such as elderly and youth. Multnomah County got a 2009 grant to train 207 health educators, police, youth, and school resource officers on youth suicide prevention, and a 2010 grant to increase awareness in the Latino community. This month, 15 billboards are up in Multnomah County, broadcasting its 24-hour crisis line phone number.

“The most important thing people can do in our community is to listen to somebody in distress, and alert others if there’s concern,” Hidalgo said.

Threatening to jump

Fire Battalion Chief Todd Keathley worked as a captain for four years at Station 24 off North Interstate Avenue and Going Street, part of a crew often the first to respond to people threatening to jump from the Fremont Bridge.

One call sticks in his memory a decade later.

Police had pulled a man in his late 20s or early 30s off the bridge railing. Days later he was back, threatening to jump. He wanted no contact with police.

So Keathley talked to him, trying to build a rapport. The young man said he hadn’t been taking his medication. His wife left him and took their son.

Keathley said he was a father, too, and tried to get the man to think about his son. He urged him not to make a rash decision when he wasn’t on his meds.

Keathley thought he’d made progress. The man let him get closer and assured Keathley he was going to climb back over the railing.

“He handed me his backpack. Then he put his hand in mine,” Keathley recalled. “He shook my hand and said, ‘Thank you.’ Then he turned and jumped.”

A memorial to Tony Wambach, a 27-year-old who killed himself in April 2010, is posted at the entry to the Oxford House in Milwaukie. Wambach's parents bought the house and leased it to the Oxford House in memory of their son, who had struggled with cocaine use but was successful during his stays at other Oxford Houses in Portland. (Brent Wojahn/The Oregonian )

Tracy Reilly was in her late 20s when her mother, Dorothy Hill, who was bipolar and suffered from depression, went missing in late January 1990. After three days, her car was found beside the Willamette River in Charbonneau. Her mother had walked into the water and drowned.

Reilly struggled with “deep sadness and loss and pain.”

There was also a great sense of shame. Reilly got no counseling. “Everyone just tried to forge on ahead,” she said. “You shouldn’t have to feel shame when you’re grieving.”

In August 2010, Reilly volunteered to work the Oregon Partnership’s suicide line. “It was some way I could give back and honor my mom at the same time,” she said.

Recently when a woman called, Reilly told the caller about her mother, and how her death affected her. “She said, ‘Well it’s given me something to think about.’”

≈≈≈

OREGON SUICIDES:

2008: 566

2009: 641

2010: 673*

*preliminary figures (Source: State’s Violent Death Report)

Oregon’s suicide rate is 35 percent higher than the national average: The rate is 15.2 suicides per 100,000 people, compared to the national rate of 11.3 per 100,000.

RESOURCES:

Oregon Partnership’s Suicide Lifeline: 800-273-TALK (800-273-8255)

Military help line: The Oregon Partnership Military Helpline provides 24-hour a day immediate mental health and suicide crisis intervention from a team of veterans and trained volunteer crisis workers. Call 888-HLP-4-VET (888-457-4838)

Youth help line: A peer-to-peer crisis line for teens. Call 877-YOUTH-911 (877-968-8491)

Multnomah County 24 hour crisis line: 503-988-4888

(Photo: Beverly & Pack)

A report released June 9 provides some insight into Oregon’s rising homeless population, and shows that mental illness and substance abuse are significant factors in a problem affecting 19,207 people statewide.

The report, based on a one-night count by Oregon Housing and Community Services (OHCS), also indicates 31 percent of those experiencing homelessness are children. The number of homeless families with children rose 33 percent from 2009.

OHCS deputy director Rick Crager said unemployment was a primary driver in Oregon’s “unprecedented” level of homelessness. Mental illness and addiction, however, also play a huge role.

According to a press release, the 2010 count probably understates the extent of the crisis. Even so, the report’s numbers are startling, with a total increase in homelessness of 12 percent over 2009.

The people counted had been homeless for an average of 12 months.

Among single adults in Oregon, 1,825 self-reported they were homeless due to a drug or alcohol problem, and 1,127 cited a mental or emotional disorder. Multiple responses were allowed, so some individuals may have given both reasons. These factors were cited almost as often as the most common response, unemployment.

The state also looked at how many homeless Oregonians had “secondary population characteristics.” These were not necessarily the same issues that individuals said had caused their homelessness. However, the numbers tell a similar story. Among all ages and living situations, 2,358 were listed as having mental or emotional problems, 2,829 had problems with substance abuse, and 1,015 have both a mental illness and an addiction. Individuals could be counted in more than one category.

Among Oregonians meeting the statewide definition of chronic homelessness, 1,555 had substance abuse problems, 1,326 had an emotional or mental disorder, and 618 had a dual diagnosis.

In Multnomah County, among the chronically homeless, substance abuse (462) was the most common secondary characteristic, followed by mental or emotional disorder (372) and dual diagnosis (221).

According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, nationally about half of people experiencing homelessness suffer from mental health issues. At any given point in time, 45 percent of homeless people report they have had mental health problems during the past year. About 25 percent of the homeless are affected by serious mental illness. Homelessness also creates and exacerbates mental and physical health problems.

The problem will likely be worse in 2011. Lisa Joyce, of OHCS, says the 9 percent across-the-board state budget cut means Oregon will provide services to 2,000 fewer homeless people next year.

For further information: One-Night Homeless Count data by county

From the Roseburg News Register, December 23 2008

Winston, Oregon – After more than 20 years of providing mental health services to Douglas County children, the Riverside Center will halt its day treatment program next month.

As of Jan. 30, the center will offer only a few small therapeutic outpatient groups, sending 16 students in treatment back into public schools and leaving 10 employees without jobs, said Dan Strasser, executive director of the Riverside Center. Strasser said he will continue to look for other types of mental health services the center could offer.

Outpatient therapy team Heidi Luckman, from left, Sarah Becker, Dan Strasser and Kathryn Gailey work to serve children at the Riverside Center in Winston.

“It’s kind of sad for me that this county’s decided — not due to lack of funds but their therapeutic philosophy — they’re going to allot the money elsewhere,” said Strasser, who has been director of the center for nearly two years.

For more than two decades, children and adolescents who have been diagnosed with serious mental health issues have attended the center daily — in place of attending a public school — to receive treatment, he said.

The day treatment program needs 24 students enrolled to keep it financially viable; currently, only 16 attend the center. Nine of the students are Oregon Health Plan recipients; they have to be authorized for the program by Douglas County Mental Health, Strasser said.

Despite the lower enrollment numbers, Strasser said he believes there is still a need for the treatment. In fact, he suspects the need has increased because of growing unemployment and poverty rates.

Statistics compiled by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services show that 21 percent of children have a diagnosable mental illness, and 5 percent of those children have extreme functional impairment. By applying those percentages to Douglas County, Strasser estimates that 500 children have extreme functional impairment and more than 200 of them should be receiving some type of high-level services.

But lately, Strasser said the county has been authorizing fewer students for the program, which means denying families who want to use the treatment center. Strasser said he believes the funding is available but the county has decided to use the money for other programs.

Peggy Kennerly, Douglas County Health Department administrator, said the method of providing mental health treatment for children has shifted, which has resulted in the money being distributed to a wider range of services.

In 2005, 60 percent of mental health funding was being used to treat 6 percent of children needing care, Kennerly said. Most of that funding was going to day and residential treatment centers for children who had reached near-crisis levels, Kennerly said.

A state initiative implemented a couple of years ago, though, required health departments to create a continuum of care that would reach kids at levels across the spectrum, she said. More and more services are being created and funded at the lower levels of the spectrum in order to reach and treat kids before they reach crisis levels, Kennerly said.

As a result, Kennerly said fewer kids need the services offered at day treatment centers and residential care facilities. Now those students needing higher levels of care may have to look outside of the county.

Kennerly said Health Department employees will work with families with children at Riverside Center to create transition plans, but kids who need day treatment will have to find care in Eugene, Grants Pass or other areas in the state. But Kennerly insists that the closure of the center does not reflect the quality of services that have been provided by Riverside.

“We really appreciate what Riverside has provided for mental health services,” she said. “And we’re sad to see them not provide day services.”

EXTRA – Riverside Center in Winston quietly changing lives, April 11 2008, KPIC.com
EXTRA – Mental health care for kids, Roseburg News-Register, September 2 2008