I've volunteered on a suicide hotline for over 2 years now, and have never had to call 911. I've come close a couple of times, when the person had the means at hand and the intent, but in both cases, I was able to talk them through the crisis. I understand from the volunteer coordinator that we call emergency services on average of once per month, and that's across 3 locations fielding thousands of calls monthly.

Mostly I focus on active listening and take a strengths based approach to helping the callers get through the crisis, by asking if there's anything that's helped them in the past, or we brainstorm a list of coping mechanisms. I've done deep breathing exercises with people having a panic attack, and a lot of time, I'm just a friendly voice to talk to for people who are desperately lonely and have no one to talk to.

There are other lines in the area, that are more inclined to call emergency services on callers, but we as a rule don't.

And don't worry about calling too often, we have lots of regular callers. The only way we treat regular callers differently, is if they're not in crisis we try to shorten the length of the call. For example a typical non-crisis call might average 40 min, but with a regular, we might try to wrap it up at 20 min. If it's a crisis call we take as long as the caller needs to get through the crisis.

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