4.4 Article

Crisis line services: A 12-month descriptive analysis of callers, call content, and referrals

Journal

HEALTH & SOCIAL CARE IN THE COMMUNITY
Volume 29, Issue 3, Pages 738-745

Publisher

WILEY
DOI: 10.1111/hsc.13325

Keywords

caller characteristics; community health; crisis line; crisis services; mental health; public health

Funding

  1. National Institute of Health [F31AA026177, T32AA13526]

Ask authors/readers for more resources

Crisis lines are valuable community resources that require evaluation and improvement. This study characterises various aspects of crisis line services, highlighting their importance and features. The findings show that the majority of callers found crisis line calls helpful.
Crisis lines are a valuable community resource that anonymously and freely serve those in acute crisis. As a result of anonymity, it has been difficult to fully characterise crisis line services. However, appraising and improving crisis line services for the communities they serve is essential, even with the additional difficulty anonymity poses. This study seeks to increase our understanding of current crisis services and utilisation via a characterisation of various aspects of a United States crisis line service centre over 12-months including features of calls (e.g. call length), callers (e.g. victimisation history), and information provided to the caller (e.g. referrals). We examine five crisis lines totalling 5,001 calls from October 2018 to September 2019. Descriptive information is provided on call volume, patterns across time, caller characteristics, victimisation types, and referrals. Although we were unable to assess prospective outcomes due to anonymity, 99.5% of callers that were asked (61.35% of all calls; n = 3,068) reported the call as helpful. This provides an important overview of crisis line services and suggests they are a valuable community health resource serving a range of callers. Given the findings of the present study, we conclude with a discussion of recommendations and implications for community crisis line centres and future research.

Authors

I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.

Reviews

Primary Rating

4.4
Not enough ratings

Secondary Ratings

Novelty
-
Significance
-
Scientific rigor
-
Rate this paper

Recommended

No Data Available
No Data Available