Beavers and Ducks and just what the fuck and just what the fuck
Where it's at. I got two police approaches and a microphone.
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Corvallis, Oregon does it wrong
Emergency responders in cities all around the country are taking a more enlightened approach to mental health crises in recent years, sending mental health professionals on more calls instead of cops. This is because most of the crises don’t involve crimes or any kind of threat to public safety and because cops often respond to situations with violence. And violence is not precisely what people in a mental health crisis need.
The approach was pioneered in large part by the city of Eugene, Oregon and its pioneering CAHOOTS program.
CAHOOTS (Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The Streets) is a mobile crisis intervention program staffed by White Bird Clinic personnel using City of Eugene vehicles. This relationship has been in place for nearly 30 years and is well embedded in the community.
CAHOOTS provides support for EPD personnel by taking on many of the social service type calls for service to include crisis counseling. CAHOOTS personnel often provide initial contact and transport for people who are intoxicated, mentally ill, or disoriented, as well as transport for necessary non-emergency medical care.
Eugene happens to be the home of University of Oregon. Oregon STATE University is located in Corvallis, where they take an approach that is much more, oh what’s the word, fucked up:
A Corvallis police officer and behavioral health specialist responded in January to a call at the Corvallis Daytime Drop-in Center, an organization that provides resources to people experiencing homelessness. The two responders were part of a new team dedicated to addressing mental health crises in the city. But it didn’t go well.
A person had locked themselves in the bathroom and wasn’t responding to drop-in center staff. Unable to see the person, and unsure if they were safe, staff called for help.
Drop-in center staff say an armed police officer arrived with a behavioral health specialist carrying a Taser.
Center staff eventually asked the police team to leave. According to staff at the drop-in center, the person would have been cited for trespassing if police had forced the person out of the bathroom, possibly preventing them from returning.
This is the standard protocol in Corvallis. Why on earth would you need an armed officer for someone locked in a bathroom? Ultimately, the staff talked to the person and then took the door off the hinges and things worked out.
Tom Scharpling on the podcast
Today’s episode is a - let’s not say rerun - COMMAND PERFORMANCE of an interview we originally ran last October, featuring Tom Scharpling. Here were my notes from then:
Within the comedy world, Tom Scharpling is known as a bit of a Swiss Army Knife. He’s the host of the long running Best Show, online now and on WFMU before that. He’s a veteran TV writer on shows like Monk and What We Do In The Shadows. He directs music videos. Now he’s a book writer, with the memoir It Never Ends. In that book and in our interview, he tells stories of his own mental health journey that he’s never shared with an audience before.
Tom started running into trouble with depression when he was around ten years old, which evolved into two hospital stays, the second of which involved electroconvulsive therapy. That treatment wiped out the depression but wiped out a big chunk of his memory in the process.
Reference from the headline:
There’s new information on hugging and it may not surprise you
Turns out hugging? Is GOOD.
Psychology Today has the scoop on new research from the Teddy Bear Institute for Scientific Cuddly Studies. That’s not the real name.
The research group also investigated the association between hugging, mood, personality, and feelings of loneliness. We found that people who hugged generally had a more positive mood. They also felt less lonely than people who embraced less.
It is important to point out that the study could not determine the causality of these effects due to the correlational study designs. Thus, hugging may lead to a more positive mood—but it could also be that people that generally have a better mood are more likely to get hugged by others.
Regarding personality, there was a negative association with neuroticism, a fundamental personality trait that reflects problems with processing negative emotions and a tendency to show feelings of anxiety, depression, fear, and anger, among others. Less neurotic people hugged more.
I read this and then I couldn’t stop thinking about it
It was part of a thread by Salil Bloom that was full of great insight.
Of course you’re going to watch a Rube Goldberg video of wine being passed
Of course you are. It will be the most popular link on this newsletter. We all know this.
Get it over with: