Comment by nyanmatt
6 hours ago
I don’t see how. Have you ever tried calling one of these lines in a suicide emergency? Things I’ve learned in California:
- an ambulance will not be dispatched unless you physically witness someone trying to kill themselves
- otherwise, they send the police
- the police arrive without training and severely escalate the situation
- the person having an emergency will be taken into custody and stripped of rights until being medically evaluated (not arrested)
This is the program of an allegedly progressive state. After 2 experiences like this, adding trauma to already traumatic situations, I would never recommend these hotlines.
Very much disagree and I am in California.
I have called this line in particular during a sever major depression episode. I tried calling my fraternities mental wellness hotline first but it went unanswered which I thought was quite funny at the time.
The rep was able to talk me down through my spiraling thoughts. Told me that "no your therapist was not egging you on when he said well why don't you commit suicide what's holding you back". He was instead trying to figure out my reasons for living.
They do not automatically call the police and telling people they do is harmful. My anecdotal evidence has been a much better experience, and others I know who have called have said the same.
I'm not sure what would cause them to send the police but having a safe line to call when you have nothing else is important. Maybe the change that should happen here is having social workers or other mental health representatives respond, not getting rid of the phoneline.
I have a loved one who used the 988 hotline several times.
None of them resulted in police intervention. Our county has a mobile crisis team of social workers who show up and get you connected to services.
... services that use force against individuals. Never ever, ever tell a social worker of any kind that you think of suicide, or that anyone else does. ESPECIALLY not if you're young. Help, or social worker's kind of help, does not help. And getting rid of social workers ... I almost killed one before that happened.
All the lip service they make to that force is not the answer. It's lies, cheats and deception on their part, nothing more. Once on a forced youth services vacation I locked, with an entire group, a social services worker into a room. She became instantly educated why locking the rooms was a bad idea, why not even having a lock on the inside was an incredible mistake, and why youth workers ignoring screaming in the facility was an incredibly bad idea. All these people want is to be the big man (yes, including the 19 year old women who join), and you cannot explain it to them. After she eventually got out, we never saw her again, and the others were a LOT more flexible.
And that wasn't even close to the worst that happened.
These things is what social services calls "protection". They purposefully create situations where Gandhi would eventually beat up his own mother, and call it protection. Don't do this to people.
Consider the possibility that both your experience and those you worked with are not universal. The experience our family had was night and day different from yours.
I suspect this varies enormously from country to country, state to state, county to county, and per provider.
edit: OP changed their post substantially, and I'm now not quite sure what it's asserting at all.
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If you want an ambulance dial 911.
These hotlines are for providing support. They are trained not to escalate to sending someone unless they absolutely deem it necessary (and the caller agrees). My wife has been working the hotline as a volunteer for 6 years and has not once escalated to sending someone.
As others noted, my California county has a dedicated team to respond to this.
Well that's just not true. You're supposed to call 911 if you witness someone else in crisis, not the crisis hotline. The police will be sent because they have baseline training in de-escalation, and they have officers with specialized training in crisis negotiation. An ambulance is relevant only if someone is already hurt. They're medical professionals. Even in that situation, police officers are usually dispatched to investigate and to keep the ambulance personnel safe in a potentially unpredictable environment. And you're correct, protective custody exists and it's there to keep the person in crisis safe.
>The police will be sent because they have baseline training in de-escalation
There are something like 30,000+ police agencies across the United States, and a proportional number within California (if we're talking about that place in particular and not more generally). To say "they have baseline training in de-escalation" is, at best, wishful thinking. While no doubt some departments make that a part of their training and within those departments most patrol officers will have undergone the training (enough that your statement wouldn't be especially incorrect if you were to specify one of those departments), it is beyond fallacious to assume that this holds true for all of them in general.
Even when the training does exist and the officer has completed it, it consists of a one or two day seminar. They are not evaluated in a way that some pass and some fail. We do not know who took it seriously, and who thought it was some jackass bleeding-heart bullshit that they could ignore. We do not know if those anyone gains by it... if some are good at it afterward and others are bad at de-escalation afterward, has that percentage shifted upwards compared to whatever their pre-training scores would suggest?
I do not believe you when you fallaciously assert "they have baseline training". No one else should believe you either, if the answer actually matters to them. I do not know why you assert this, and the speculation ranges from "not a good reason" to "even worse reasons".
And yet the data shows that they did decline. I'm sure they could be much better, and the response will vary from state to state.
I find something darkly depressing and comedic about how we try to prevent people from shooting themselves by sending people with guns to help them.
> how we try to prevent people from shooting themselves by sending people with guns to help them
People with guns are still people. Having anyone there will reduce harm in more cases than it escalates. Suicide is usually an impulse a lonely person who is otherwise perfectly sane carries out in the absence of intervention.
Replace the phrase "people with guns" with "institutional violence" because that's what the police are. When police are called to the scene, the intention of the caller is violence, not to help. If the intention was help, then actual helpers would be called instead.
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Armed cops actively escalating the situation will help someone suicidal?
The cops in my country do work that is not about catching criminals, like leading search and rescure operations. Apparently not a problem. Apparently now these particular police have started carrying weapons as a matter of course. So that’s a bad development for a regular, peaceful presence. But overall we seem okay with the regime.
So I don’t have some personal feeling that violence is about to erupt because the police are nearby.
But I don’t see how this helps for those particular locales where the population (or segments of it) only associate active police involvement with escalation.
> People with guns are still people
No one is questioning that police are people.
> Having anyone there will reduce harm in more cases than it escalates
That was never the point I was arguing against. I was arguing against which people are there.
> Suicide is usually an impulse a lonely person who is otherwise perfectly sane carries out in the absence of intervention.
I do not believe that in the slightest. There is an array of causes from physical illnesses, mental illnesses, spiritual beliefs, political beliefs, to even cultural beliefs. Sure, loneliness can contribute in some cases, but it does not hold a candle to conditions like mood disorders, psychotic disorders, substance abuse, etc..
They're crisis services, not emergency services. Anyone who is an immediate danger to themselves or others needs to be attended to by the first available emergency services. The attending services should be trained to deescalate, definitely, but I don't think this is an indictment of the crisis lines themselves. Less than 1% of calls to the crisis line result in any sort of emergency service dispatch.
A fact I've noticed is that suicide rates are higher in areas with lower population density. For example, Alaska's suicide rate is 4x what New York's rate is.
Perhaps just human connection, even momentarily, is enough to break the pattern of behavior that has lead to the ideation.
Also worth noting that suicide rates among the elderly are higher than they are for anyone other than teens. If you have someone you love that doesn't get out much, make sure you give them a call now and again.
The more likely explanation is guns. Gun ownership tends to be higher in rural areas because of a mixture of culture, politics, utility and laws. Only 14% of adults in New York State have guns compared to 59% in Alaska. Having a quick, easy and painless way to end your life right on your nightstand makes it a lot more likely that a bolt of suicidal urges turn into action.
https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/gun-ownership.html
An alternative explanation is that cold places with long winters are depressing, and because they are depressing fewer people want to live there.
Alaskan winters are hard regardless of how many friends you have.
If you take a chart of population density, and overlay the chart of suicide rate, you'll see an exceedingly strong correlation. It does not follow weather patterns. Utah has 3x the problem relative to California, for example.
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