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Abstract
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The Suicide Prevention and Crisis Service of Buffalo has been operating a suicide prevention telephone service for 18 months and this paper investigates how the characteristics of those using the service have changed since the opening of the service.
The suicide-prevention service began operation in November 1968. In October, 1969 the SPCS opened a teenage problem service and it was felt that the opening of these two alternative telephone counseling services might have changed the type of individual calling the suicide-prevention service...
...Several changes are apparent in the characteristics of callers to the suicide-prevention service. There is some movement toward getting a higher proportion of males calling the service, a higher proportion of anonymous callers, and a higher proportion of people calling for themselves rather than another. There are fewer teenagers nowadays calling the suicide prevention service as compared to the early days of the center which is perhaps attributable to the opening of the teenage problem service.
The calls to the suicide-prevention service are getting more clustered in time and, at the time of the most recent analysis, 71% of the calls were received during 9 hours (from noon until 3 pm and from 6 pm until midnight).
The proportion of calls concerned with suicidal problems has also increased, again perhaps due to the fact that the other two services have handled some of the non-suicidal callers who might have called the suicide-prevention service. Of course, the volume of calls on these two new services is so great that it is quite clear that these new services have been used also by large numbers of individuals who would not have called the suicide-prevention service.
More notable is the fact that the suicide-prevention service has not been able to increase the proportion of calls from those divorced, widowed or separated and, similarly, has not been able to increase the proportion of calls from elderly individuals. These individuals might be thought to be more isolated than other members of the community and so in more need of a telephone counseling service. Either this notion is wrong or, alternatively (and this is more likely) the suicide-prevention service is not reaching these individuals.
Language: en |