Some local mental health advocates say little has changed in the year since the fatal police shooting of 19-year-old Ryan Salisbury, who advanced on officers with a knife during a psychotic episode at his parents’ Eugene home.

Many are frustrated that the police department has added another weapon to its arsenal — the controversial Taser — but done little to improve training for officers who are often the first to encounter people suffering from mental health problems.

“I don’t think anything has changed yet that would make a difference if a young person suffering a mental health crisis faced the same type of circumstances Ryan did a year ago,” said Sue Archbald, a retired elementary school teacher who formed a group to educate emergency responders dealing with the mentally ill after the Salisbury shooting. “No policy has changed that I know of. There’s been no additional training that I know of.”

Salisbury had been struggling with bipolar disorder for more than a year and had made previous suicide attempts before the early morning of Nov. 14, 2006, when he suffered a psychotic break and spiraled out of control. When police arrived, Salisbury walked toward them with a knife in his hand, ignoring their orders to stop and resisting several hits from beanbag rounds.

An officer shot him five times as his parents watched from a bedroom window. He died in the family’s driveway.

The shooting sparked community discussion about the training and equipment available to Eugene police officers, and limitations posed by the county mental health system.

The city’s police commission drew up a policy for a pilot program that will arm 30 officers with Taser stun guns by the first of the year.

Jeff and Denise Salisbury, Ryan’s parents, have said the device might have saved their son’s life.

Also on the table is a proposal to create teams of officers specially trained to interact with people suffering from mental health issues. Known nationally as crisis intervention teams, the involved officers would focus on verbally de-escalating crisis situations to bring about nonviolent conclusions.

Police Chief Robert Lehner has said his officers will receive some kind of crisis intervention training, but time, money and a new curriculum at the state’s police academy will determine exactly how and when it is done.

“I think it will be sooner rather than later,” Lehner said. “It’s a good proposal. We had been and always will be looking for good training opportunities for our staff.”

Lane County Mental Health Program Manager Al Levine said progress is being made in other areas, as well.

His department joined with Archbald’s group and the National Alliance on Mental Illness to send three members of the Lane County Sheriff’s Office to a national crisis intervention conference in August. Earlier this year, they hosted training for 29 emergency responders that featured a panel of mental health patients and their families.

In addition, the county’s mental health advisory body has named crisis intervention training one of its top priorities for the coming year.

Levine said he plans to approach Sheriff Russ Burger with a plan to offer training to all law enforcement agencies in the county, not just Eugene. Various agencies dealing with mental health issues have offered to help.

“I am optimistic and I think it will be within this next year,” Levine said. “This is an opportunity that our community should not miss out on. We need to seize the momentum.”

From the beginning, the Salisbury family has said they want Ryan’s death to result in saved lives. Over the past year, they have attended meetings and participated in discussions about how to prevent similar deaths in the future.

Jeff Salisbury said he and his wife are heartened by the progress made in the past year to improve the way police treat the mentally ill. He said the addition of Tasers and the potential adoption of crisis intervention training could prevent another outcome like the one started when his wife called 911 to ask police for help.

“Properly trained and armed, the officers could have worked to calm the situation down, instead of shouting at the top of their lungs, ‘Drop the weapon!’ ” he said. “If that had not worked, they could have subdued Ryan with a Taser stun. Either way he could have been taken to the hospital where needed treatment would have been provided.”

Hugh Massengill, a former mental health client and member of the city’s Human Rights Commission, is skeptical about whether Tasers are the answer. During a temporary stint on the police commission, his was the lone vote against Tasers. He called them “cattle prods for the poor.”

“If they were only to be used in place of a pistol or rifle, I would be hard pressed to oppose them, but in truth, they will almost always be used on poor people who are not armed and are not suicidal,” he said, citing cases of Taser abuse in Texas.

“I am in the minority in feeling that the one thing that we have done, Tasers, may be a mistake.”

Instead of adding weapons, the community ought to focus on educating young people about how to get help, teaching parents to relate to their children and encouraging discussion during the intense emotional storms that teens often experience.

“We need to get rid of the stigma of being in mental health crisis, and we definitely need to find a way to get more funding for one-to-one, face-to-face counseling,” he said.

David Oaks, director of Eugene-based Mind Freedom International, which advocates for the rights of mental health consumers, said the shooting had one immediate effect: It got people talking.

Groups that previously had been working in isolation are now communicating and in some cases joining forces to better serve their constituents, he said.

Archbald of the mental illness alliance agreed that public awareness has increased over the past year, and that that fact alone could cause officers to use greater caution in the future. But she said the lack of urgency among officials is frustrating.

“The intense effort to try to make things better seems to have fallen on volunteers, not the people who are paid with our tax dollars to do this kind of work,” she said. “But I think the tipping point has come. It has come because of public pressure. I think there are ways to get this going and I truly am hopeful that that can happen.”