Someone screamed for help on the Schuylkill River Trail. No one stopped.

Recently, on a beautiful fall afternoon, I was sitting in the lobby of an apartment building near the Schuylkill River Trail. I was waiting for a friend, when I heard what sounded like a scream for help.

My friend arrived shortly after. I mentioned what I’d heard, and we went to investigate. We walked over to the Schuylkill River Trail, waited, and listened — there it was again.

“Help. Someone help!”

We quickly moved toward what sounded like a woman’s voice coming from the very populated trail. Once there, we noticed a tent just off to the side of the trail, under some trees. The tent was mostly closed, so we could not see inside, but we could hear a woman repeating her plea.

We approached and asked if she was OK. She told us that she couldn’t move and needed help. I kept talking to her from the outside of the tent while my friend called 911.

If you heard someone screaming for help, what would you do?

If you heard someone screaming for help, what would you do?

Unfortunately, most people would probably do nothing. From the time I heard the scream for help, I watched dozens of people on the trail that day bike, run, and walk right past a woman in a closed tent, screaming for help. They didn’t respond, intervene, or stop to ask if she was OK.

For years, I was a resuscitation science researcher. I studied how to get more people to respond when someone’s heart stopped beating, meaning they had suffered a sudden cardiac arrest.

CPR performed by a bystander can double or even triple the chances of surviving, yet most people who suffer a cardiac arrest don’t receive this lifesaving intervention. I always figured people were too nervous to perform what seems like a complicated “procedure” on a stranger in dire need, and that is certainly the case sometimes.

What I witnessed that fall afternoon by the Schuylkill River Trail has made me stop and rethink what is happening.

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People who don’t stop to help aren’t necessarily bad people. It’s quite common, an illustration of the phenomenon known as the bystander effect, a social theory that posits that individuals are less likely to intervene when other people are around. It’s the reason people don’t always step in when faced with a bully, crime, or emergency — they feel that someone else around them will handle it.

But that day, I couldn’t help but wonder if some other force was at work. Namely, apathy.

Apathy is defined as a “lack of interest, enthusiasm, or concern.” It is no secret that the last few years have made us more apathetic, what some have called a “mass apathy” of sorts — a result of the constant barrage of tragedy from the pandemic, racial injustice, gun violence, climate emergencies, and more. The combination of these traumas is too much to take in and process and can make even the most empathetic people shut down.

Yet, while waiting by the tent for emergency responders to arrive, I could not grasp how so many Philadelphians could pass by a person in duress. At best, the runners and walkers and cyclists were hoping someone else would stop and take care of it; at worst, they did not care enough to care.

This isn’t an isolated incident. People see people in this city all the time in need of help, and we drive by in our cars or walk by on the street and do nothing. It is the rare person who will stop in the middle of the road and give a barefoot person in need the shoes off their feet.

We need to be that person, Philly. We need to snap out of the mass apathy that has brought us to this point.

We need to be less apathetic and more empathetic; we need to be brave enough to ask the simple question: “Are you OK?” Because I don’t think we are.

Marion Leary is a nurse, public health practitioner, and activist.