What To Expect When You Call a Suicide Prevention Hotline

On National Suicide Prevention Day last week, many Twitter celebrities did their civic duty by retweeting the same two tweets over & over again, both pointing to suicide prevention hotlines. Some people who discuss suicide the other 364 days of the year were irritated by the superficial emphasis on hotlines—as if tweeting a hotline constituted quality support. Certainly, Twitter can be vapid. Twitter advocacy is usually about feeling charitable more than actually being charitable. But were suicide prevention hotlines as bad as people claimed? I generally considered a hotline the last option because there are so many other better, more personable, resources out there, but common consent on Twitter was that these hotlines were terrible things best avoided like the hantavirus. Some people expressed fear that conversations were recorded and traced. Some even claimed that their experience with a hotline was demeaning when they were questioned for demographic information. Could it be true? I found out that many of the fears people have were mislaid, and that a suicide prevention hotline was far more useful than I realized. I had called a hotline before when I explored asking Apple’s Siri to get suicide help and had a very positive experience, so I thought I’d call and ask them to address people’s concerns. Then I called them again a few days later when I was feeling down to see what would happen. Here’s what I learned. If you use Siri you will get the phone number ...
Source: The Splintered Mind by Douglas Cootey - Category: Mental Illness Tags: Coping Depression Source Type: blogs