News

Ok so you might not use the service therefore nobody should get to use it

Holy fuck this might be the most ignorant opinion I've seen shared on lemmy

A Hotline like this is for desperate people in need of help. Have you ever been so desperate about anything that you thought of ending your life? No need to answer.

I don't have any significant mental health issues, but I can see the appeal.

Sometimes you just really need to get stuff off of your chest. Ideally you have people close to you that you can vent to, but some people don't, and even if you do, sometimes they're just the wrong kind of people to have that sort of conversation with.

And just being able to say something out loud can help you figure things out on your own. Sowe programmers and such do "rubber duck debugging" where they just explain the code and the issues they're having to a rubber duck or stuffed animal or something on their desk, and the act of talking through it sort of engages different parts of your brain and often that's enough to find the issue (I remember one time back in high school I was taking a programming class, I was presenting my project to the class, it worked, but it was a mess of ugly spaghetti code, and as I was up there explaining it out loud for the first time, something just clicked and I realized how I could have done it a much better way.) Some people feel really stupid talking to a rubber duck though (especially if it's someone who's already afraid that people think they're "crazy") so having an actual human to talk to could be really helpful for them.

And a lot of these things have other resources they can offer. They may be able to help you find a support group, therapist, housing assistance, have some sort of a crisis team they can send out to meet with you, etc.

And for what it's worth, I work in 911 dispatch. This will vary a lot around the country of course, but while we certainly do get a decent amount of calls from crisis hotlines, they're basically all for people who are in imminent danger of harming themselves. And the number of those calls I get is absolutely tiny in comparison to the amount of calls I've transferred to 988 and our police never so much as drove past the callers house.

There are many who don't even have that choice. If it's not a stranger, then it's nobody. I know I have people to talk to when I'm down, but it'll be very selfish and will show lack of empathy if I think everyone has that luxury.

I am an outpatient therapist who specializes in queer clients and I have had many clients utilize the Trevor project and translifeline over the years. They often don’t call crisis supports because they do support mental health issues outside of ideation

That said no situation is perfect but in many locations they don’t even call the cops anymore because many states fund mobile crisis response units that have therapists respond instead of police.

But frankly this is the nature of crisis response. I worked in crisis response for years before shifting to outpatient. There is both a legal liability and moral obligation to do something if someone is truly a danger to themselves or others. Suicidal ideation is overwhelming a transient state, eg if we keep you safe during the worst of it you will eventually consider it a very good thing that you did not commit suicide. This is not conjecture, this is evidence based.

I will admit that there are bad hospitals and police response can be quite poor or even deadly. At the same time it is also an issue that is heightened in terms of awareness. Thousands of people per day are processed into inpatient per day on involuntary holds, cops shooting them or serious abuse happen fairly rarely. Obviously any incidence is completely unacceptable and we need to continue to highlight issues and strive for reforms, but to paint an involuntary hold as an inevitable abusive or even fatal encounter is seriously misleading and potentially dissuades people from pursuing support that may be desperately needed in crisis.

I do understand your response. We need do decouple the overwhelming majority of crisis mental health response from police (though response to situations with firearms adds complexity and currently mobile crisis will not respond to these at least around me), fund more mobile crisis response programs nationwide, fund more interim partial support programs that exist between inpatient and outpatient (community supports/iop/php/new modalities altogether), overhaul therapist training and supervision, etc. but in the meantime we have the system we have and we have to work within the constraints of that framework while we continue to push and advocate for change