A Friendly Voice on the Other End of the Crisis Line
Story by Bailey Tomlinson | Contributions by Jessica Fryberger | Design & Illustration by Sara Roach
Maintaining mental health has been at the forefront of almost every mind over the past year, as unprecedented numbers of isolated people found themselves spending more time than ever sequestered within their living spaces. Even with a partner or roommates, stagnating in the same condensed spaces and habits for a year may have made slipping into feeling deeply alone easier than most have ever expected it to be.
In these moments of depression, anxiety or overwhelming feelings of loneliness or loss, reaching for the phone is a way to reach for a helping hand. Friendly voices trained to assist any level of distress are ready to answer any call made to a crisis line.
Crisis lines range from general support to specialized services for youth, addiction or those looking to speak with people from similar walks of life. Some are available 24/7, many are anonymous and all are there to help. Even in the face of a pandemic, crisis centers have stepped up their services to quickly accommodate growing needs within their communities.
Washington Listens
One program to come from this effort is Washington Listens. Made up of 13 partnering agencies working together, it takes calls statewide from people primarily looking for a support specialist to assist with pandemic-related mental health struggles, anxieties or other problems.
“The call can be about anything,” Casey Forsyth, a crisis counselor with Washington Listens, says. “From ‘My cat died,’ to ‘I just tested positive for [COVID-19.]’ Most people who call just want to talk and for someone to listen. They identify extreme loneliness, chronic pain, health problems, job loss, [mental health] issues, fears of catching COVID-19, fears of side effects of the vaccine, family members who are sick, what’s on the news ... most callers just want to talk to someone because of isolation.”
Something crisis center workers across the board wanted to emphasize is that whether you are actively having a crisis or just an off day, they are here for you.
Lila Lopeman, a support specialist with Washington Listens, says that everyone answering calls is really encouraging and greets the public enthusiastically. She, and those who work with her, want to get the word out that the support line is a really good resource for people, and for everyone to know it’s available to them.
“Anyone can call. It doesn't matter who you are or what you do,” Lauren Rigert, senior director of development and community relations at Crisis Connections, says. ”Your ethnicity, your immigration status, your income, your gender, it doesn't matter to us. We want to be able to provide the service no matter what.”
At the beginning of the pandemic, some existing resources at crisis centers were adapted to take in COVID-19 related calls. Crisis centers like Crisis Connections have been seeing immense boosts in call volume throughout the pandemic. According to the Healthier Washington Collaboration Portal, Washington Listens was created in response to the pandemic. The program has since been expanded to also support those affected by wildfires.
"The 2-1-1 Network was activated by the State Department of Health back in March of 2020 to answer the COVID-19 information hotline," Rigert says. "At the end of 2020, we'd taken around 25,000 phone calls on that line statewide."
Community Cornerstones
Although the pandemic has caused these crisis lines to see spikes in call volume, some have been facets of the community for over half a century.
Crisis Connections specifically was founded in response to a need for mental health support and resources following a traumatic event in the community. Back in 1963, a United States Postal worker struggling with mental health but unable to get support or resources stabbed a little girl in the neighborhood, Rigert says. The little girl lived, and instead of the community response being retributive, Crisis Connections, at the time called Crisis Clinic, was born.
“[The community] said, ‘Never again should someone be looking for support and resources. They should be able to find them and get the help that they need,’” Rigert says. “And so that’s when the Crisis Clinic … was born.”
According to Rigert, it started in the basement of one of the clinician’s homes using rotary phones, with clinicians answering the crisis line after hours.
“The central mission [that Crisis Connections began with] is definitely still there,” Rigert says. “All of our programs and services are related to our mission in terms of being a support and resource for community members. The community just happened to grow a little bit more.”
According to Rigert, Crisis Connections is still providing the same thing that they provided back in 1964 - support at the moment of crisis for an individual, as well as support and resources for the next step.
They offer six core programs outside of their involvement with Washington Listens, which includes a 24-hour crisis line, community training programs, Teen Link (which is a youth peer-support line) and the Warm line (which is an adult peer-support line). They also offer resource-related lines, like the King County 2-1-1 program (which is a referral program for social services), the Washington State Recovery Helpline (which provides support and resources around substance use disorders and problem gambling), and a support after suicide program. All of these programs, except for the community training programs, are free to utilize.
Rigert says all of their programs are centered around the idea of a continuum of care for crisis, from prevention to intervention to support.
“What we say is, ‘Crisis is self-defined.’ There’s no crisis that is priority over another. So we handle a whole variety of different crises, so, it could be someone calling up saying they’re just having a bad day and want to talk to someone all the way up to, ‘I’m on the bridge and I’m ready to jump.’”
Rigert says what they consider a crisis is a “wide spectrum,” and the majority of their phone calls and contacts are not from people who are on the verge of suicide.
“I think around 15% of our calls or contacts are suicidal ideation,” Rigert says.
Crisis Connections, and many other crisis centers like it, is not meant to be the end of the line for somebody seeking help, support or resources regarding mental health. These hotlines are more of a place of transit to help callers find where to go next.
“Think about a centralized location or a centralized safety net, if you will, for folks to be able to say, ‘I don’t know where to go for this particular service, I don’t know even who to call or what to do,’” Rigert says. “They can come to us and we can help them figure out what they need and make sure they get to the right place.”
A CWU student, who will remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the content, says that they have called the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline in the past, and that the experience was “very helpful and grounding.”
“[It] definitely helped me in my situation, to just kind of come down from that stage of freak-out to being grounded in where I was,” the student says.
The student says they know it can be hard, especially when experiencing a crisis, but to keep in mind that there’s no need to “tone it down” for the crisis counselors. Their job is to help those in crisis, and making things seem not as bad as they may be won’t help either party.
“Don’t be embarrassed to call. That’s what they are there for, they literally have volunteers that want to help you for that reason, so don’t even start to second guess it,” the student says. “Because, even if it’s a minor thing, and after ten minutes you feel like you’re better, that’s okay. That’s what they’re there for. So don’t second guess it, just do it. They are there to help you, so take advantage of that.”
Rigert says calls have been coming in from out-of-state college students during the pandemic who are quarantined or stuck in Washington and do not know who to talk to or what resources are available around them and do not want to further worry distant family who may not be able to directly help. These calls are often about COVID-19 fears or feelings of isolation.
Director of CWU’s Office of Case Management, Joy Stochosky, says that her department refers students to crisis hotlines all the time. Automatic email responses from the department always contain references to local crisis lines and the national crisis line number, and they work closely with the local Comprehensive Healthcare, which is contracted with the local crisis line, according to Stochosky.
“Our primary responsibility is to follow up with students who’ve been identified as having extenuating circumstances, often crisis-related extenuating circumstances,” Stochosky says. “I think anytime that we can help a student feel a little less overwhelmed and a little more understood is a win.”
Stochosky says with the pandemic making face-to-face interactions less possible, they have also gotten a lot more familiar with using virtual spaces to reach out to and meet with students.
Listening to the Listeners
Something that all of the support specialists interviewed agreed on is that the rewards of answering calls from those in crisis outweigh the challenges.
“For me it’s just giving people somewhere to call and help them ease their anxiety, that’s what I like the best, is just that they know that they’re not alone,” Nora Cornelius, team lead for the Washington Listens team at the American Indian Community Center, says. “So many people are isolated, and it can get scary.”
Forsyth says one of the rewards of answering calls, in addition to the reward of helping others, is that each day at work is different.
"The most rewarding for me is," Patty Campbell, a support specialist working with Washington Listens, says, is "reassuring [callers] that their feelings are absolutely normal, that they're not over the top, that they are experiencing things that are common. They oftentimes feel very comforted by that, and by the time we come to the end of the call, they're in a much better state mentally and emotionally."
There are times where the work can be challenging, however. On an administrative side, Karl Beall, Programs Manager for Community Integrated Health Services, says reworking infrastructure to accommodate such a large community need quickly enough to help those who are seeking it is an undertaking.
Beall says rewards and challenges are often tightly intertwined. While taking part in a team that can overcome barriers to community support is rewarding, shifting some team members to Washington Listens line required the adaptation of processes, resources and thinking around remote work.
“It’s been quite a ride,” Rigert says. “But you know, we’re up and running, we’re there for people who are in crisis. That’s what we do.”
The work has been a different kind of difficult at times for those who are directly interacting with callers. Some callers are hostile, or convinced that COVID-19 support is founded in disinformation.
“I’ve had a few [callers] that will yell at me and say, ‘[COVID-19] isn’t real,’ or things like that,” Cornelius says. “But of course, we’re not here to argue.” She says that’s the hardest thing about the job.
The length of time the pandemic has gone on can also wear down on some callers, Forsyth says. “Everyone is experiencing the stress, and there is no break from it.”
Despite these challenges, support specialists still look forward to being able to help those who call.
“Washington Listens is here to, well, listen,” Beall says. Washington Listens is a temporary program, currently set to expire in July of 2021. However, an extension has been applied for, and the crisis centers involved in the program are just waiting to hear back on whether or not it will be approved. If so, it will be given resources to operate for another nine months before being up for expiration again.
“As it stands, the contract ends at the end of July of 2021. But we know that the behavioral health ramifications of the pandemic are going to be for a while. And so we think that this particular resource, this line, is definitely something that we want to keep going for a while,” Rigert says. “So we're hoping, fingers crossed, that it will be extended another nine months.”
Many of the support specialists expressed a desire to continue helping wherever they can do the most good, and say that Washington Listens has put them right where they need to be.
“Something that we want our callers to understand, and the public, is that what they’re experiencing, however it comes out, is normal and to be expected,” Campbell says. “They’re not alone in the feelings that they have, and the fears and the anxieties and all of that. And as far as mental health and emotional health, it’s okay to reach out for help.”
