June 21, 2023
Willamette Week
Just two months into the launch of Portland Street Response, supervisor Britt Urban encountered a problem mental health clinicians couldn’t resolve.
“Today, we were out on the side of the freeway talking to a woman who was very unwell and dangerously close to traffic and acting erratically,” Urban wrote to the program’s manager, Robyn Burek, on April 21, 2021. “[Police] got there and assumed we would write a Director’s Custody, but we explained we are unable to.”
By “director’s custody,” Urban meant what’s more commonly known as an involuntary hold. Mental health workers authorized by Multnomah County can decide that someone in distress on the streets poses enough of an imminent risk to themselves or others that they may be held against their will. When a social worker writes such a hold, an ambulance takes the person to a hospital for psychiatric evaluation and care.