2 ms·

I can't reveal more about my volunteering, but I will say that it was never me who made the calls, it was always a supervisor who could monitor the conversation

I can't reveal more about my volunteering, but I will say that it was never me who made the calls, it was always a supervisor who could monitor the conversation. But asking permission is not really an option, and I'll explain why using a different situation. We were also mandatory reporters, which meant that if we knew that a child was being abused, we had to report it to the authorities. This was actually a very high bar to climb, but once we knew it, we had a duty to report. It was a threshold after which it wasn't our decision. The way it worked with suicidal folks was that they had a risk assessment, and only folks who were both at high risk and were unwilling to work with us to come up with a strategy for staying alive would be at risk for a call. The "working with" is critical. We weren't looking for "turn your life around" moments, just "Can we keep you alive tonight?" kind of plans. This meant that if someone told us that their plan for the night was to smoke a ton of pot and sleep... while we couldn't condone illegal activity (depending on where they lived), if it kept them alive for the night, it was what we went with. There was a lot of watching Netflix/Youtube/Tiktok until the person fell asleep- and that was alright with us. The only people who had emergency services called would be folks where they'd say to us "I'm not willing to come up with a plan" and or "I'm not going to be safe tonight" and when we'd tell them that we'd need to call emergency services unless they told us they'd be safe, still didn't do that. Like I said, this was very rare, about one in a thousand people.

lilboiluvr69 3y ago
> But asking permission is not really an option, and I'll explain why using a different situation. We were also mandatory reporters, which meant that if we knew that a child was being abused, we had to report it to the authorities. This was actually a very high bar to climb, but once we knew it, we had a duty to report. It was a threshold after which it wasn't our decision. I appreciate your response, from what I gathered it seems like your justification for not asking permission is "well that's not up to me, its higher in the chain". Which I understand, I'm not criticizing /you/ in particular, I understand you are a mandated reporter, I'm critizing the policy itself. I'm saying people who call suicide hotlines should be informed they are talking to a mandated reporter at the beginning of the call.
- emacsen 3y ago
  I agree entirely. There were many things that upset me about our system/process. We were a messaging based service (not voice) and we were trained to not lie, but not be entirely forthcoming with folks either. For example, if they asked about privacy, we would skirt around the situation or point them to legal documents rather than be honest. Another example is that on rare occasion, a person might be talking to a person and they had to leave. In those situations, one of us might continue to talk to them as if we were the other person. I always felt creepy doing this. Our service was very focused on making everything very procedural and standardized, but in doing so, I felt like we were simply serving up fast-food help- consistent but lacking in depth as well. I can see both sides of all of this... there were so many people that needed help and not enough volunteers, so standardizing helps. At the same time, I bet that today a ChatGPT service could do basically what we did (and I know they collected our chats and did analytics on them, so I bet that's what they're thinking too).

lilboiluvr69 3y ago

> But asking permission is not really an option, and I'll explain why using a different situation. We were also mandatory reporters, which meant that if we knew that a child was being abused, we had to report it to the authorities. This was actually a very high bar to climb, but once we knew it, we had a duty to report. It was a threshold after which it wasn't our decision. I appreciate your response, from what I gathered it seems like your justification for not asking permission is "well that's not up to me, its higher in the chain". Which I understand, I'm not criticizing /you/ in particular, I understand you are a mandated reporter, I'm critizing the policy itself. I'm saying people who call suicide hotlines should be informed they are talking to a mandated reporter at the beginning of the call.

emacsen 3y ago
I agree entirely. There were many things that upset me about our system/process. We were a messaging based service (not voice) and we were trained to not lie, but not be entirely forthcoming with folks either. For example, if they asked about privacy, we would skirt around the situation or point them to legal documents rather than be honest. Another example is that on rare occasion, a person might be talking to a person and they had to leave. In those situations, one of us might continue to talk to them as if we were the other person. I always felt creepy doing this. Our service was very focused on making everything very procedural and standardized, but in doing so, I felt like we were simply serving up fast-food help- consistent but lacking in depth as well. I can see both sides of all of this... there were so many people that needed help and not enough volunteers, so standardizing helps. At the same time, I bet that today a ChatGPT service could do basically what we did (and I know they collected our chats and did analytics on them, so I bet that's what they're thinking too).