What it's like being on the other end of the phone with a Veteran in distress.
Responders at the National Veterans Suicide Prevention Hotline help veterans in distress talk through their issues and lead them to the help they need. Suicide Prevention Hotline: 1-800-273-TALK.
“My very first phone call was one hour and 45 minutes and it was a gentleman who wanted to blow up the central [Veterans Affairs] office in Florida and take himself with it.”
Answering this call from her desk at the Canandaigua, NY call center for the National Veterans Suicide Prevention Hotline, Beth Olson is much more than the “good listener” she describes herself to be. Down the phone line, her first caller started talking about his kids and the explosives strapped to his body.
“It’s a very strange situation to be on the other side of the phone when someone is in such turmoil. It’s not hectic, it’s calm. It’s almost like a dance; you have to keep up with them and make sure you make the right decisions.
“He’d only been back a few months from Iraq. What I was thinking was to find out whether he was in an apartment building or in a residential neighborhood. If I can keep him talking and keep him distracted from doing anything, like getting in the car and driving to the Regional Office. {read more}
They sent out an e-mail update for the above report, same link but changes:
For Suicide Prevention Week the Veterans Health Administration is featuring stories on our website highlighting the work of the Veterans Suicide Prevention Hotline.
Earlier this morning we published a story featuring a telephone responder at the Hotline. The story was entitled, “Thank You For Calling the Veterans Suicide Hotline.”
Unfortunately, when the story alert was automatically generated and sent to our e-mail subscribers, the story title above perhaps took on a very different meaning when read as the subject line of an incoming message.
Since then we have changed the story's title to “Behind the Scenes with a Veterans Suicide Hotline Responder.”
We’re sorry for the confusion this may have caused.
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