sossilenceofsuicide

[Sheila]

Has anyone seen the numerous adverts on TalkTV for people to volunteer to talk to suicidal people on the phone.

This seems a terrible idea to me.  One of my daughters is a trained counselor and when I asked her what she thought, she was horrified.  

[Diasi]

I was think that the other day when the advert was on.

But I thought "sod that", they can pay me if they want me to do it.

[GrannyMac]

I was a Samaritan for a while, about 25 years ago.  I couldn't do it again. 

[Sheila]

I was a Samaritan for a while, about 25 years ago.  I couldn't do it again.

That must have been stressful.  Did you have 'supervision' to talk things over?

[Alex]

I guess having someone to listen is better than no-one.

[GrannyMac]

That must have been stressful.  Did you have 'supervision' to talk things over?

It was sometimes, but we had lots of training and supervision. We never worked alone either.  I worked full time, and struggled with having to take a turn overnight, one of the main reasons I quit.  TBH we didn't get many calls from people who were on the brink. In those days the calls were localised numbers, and we got frequent flyers with mental health issues, sometimes loneliness was the reason. Domestic abuse victims occasionally, and we had contacts for the local refuge, so we could help those callers.

And lets not forget the men (I never heard of women doing it) who thought they would shock or upset us by talking dirty. Heard it all, gave them lots of empathy, which they really didn't want!  I changed jobs, started working for the council, the job involved working with homeless people, often vulnerable.  It was too much of the same.