Volunteering at a crisis hotline... [View all]

For about 6 years in the 1980s, I volunteered at a crisis hotline in California. The phone volunteers went through a extensive training process to learn how to help people who called. It involved lots of role-playing sessions and much more, followed by working phones with an experienced phone volunteer. The key, though, was developing empathy and an understanding that the people who called really did want help. From there, it was a matter of finding creative ways to help, and that depended on the individual volunteer.

A lot of the calls could be handled with careful listening and a referral. But, the suicide calls were all unique and could only be handled one at a time with great care and ingenuity. The key thing with every one of those calls was to understand that the person calling wanted a reason not to go through with it. The trick was finding what combination of listening and talking would provide that reason and convince the person to take an action to get help.

The amazing thing was that in the entire time I volunteered there, not a single person who called followed through with a suicide. All of the volunteers managed to listen and talk the callers into seeking assistance. Such calls weren't frequent, and most came in the middle of the night, but pretty much every phone volunteer had the experience. In those 6 years, I think I only had four of them. That record amazed me, and I give credit to the training all the volunteers received AND the individual creativity and compassion that let them find the unique solutions for each call.

I'm not doing that crisis line work any longer, but I want to thank every single crisis hotline volunteer who has ever worked a crisis phone line. Every time the phone rings, there's a chance they will save a life. Society owes a huge debt of gratitude for these tireless volunteers, I think.