Citation

Lester D. Crisis Interv. 1969; 1(1): 5-8.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1969, Suicide Prevention and Crisis Service)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The Suicide Prevention and Crisis Service of Buffalo has already become one of the busiest suicide prevention centers in the United States. In August, 1969 the center received 449 calls from new patients, 552 calls from patients who had already made one contact with the center, and 835 incompleted calls (that is, calls in which the caller hangs up, makes some obscene comment, says that he has a wrong number, etc.) For comparison, the Suicide Prevention Service of Ancora State Hospital in Hammonton, New Jersey, received 160 serious calls in its first eleven months of operation and the daily rate leveled off to 2-3 per day. (Brunt, et al., 1968). At the Erie County Suicide Prevention and Crisis Service (which, of course, serves a larger population) the daily rate is 20-40 calls and the number is rising steadily.

Between the date of opening, October 31st and February 13th, 1969, a total of 626 new patients made contact with the center via the telephone. This paper will describe the characteristics of this population.

When a patient calls the center, the counselor attempts to collect some data about the patient and his problem and to write this down on a specially designed form. Of course, since the handling of the patient's problem is the primary function of the counselor (and not data collection) information is often not obtained on many of the patients. If information is not available, the counselor is asked to guess the race and the age of the patient.

The Typical Patient
The modal caller was female (69.6% of the callers to the center were female), aged 35-44 years of age, was single (44.9% of the callers were single and 35.0% were married), was not living alone, was white, identified himself (only 34.7% of the callers to the center remained anonymous), and was employed (29.2% of the callers were employed) or a housewife (29.7% of the callers were housewives).

Language: en