SOS via SMS: Help for suicidal teens is a text message away
Health
SOS via SMS: Help for suicidal teens is a text message away
With younger generations using cellphones less for actual conversation and more for text messaging, suicide prevention organizations are setting up ways that let distraught youths seek help that way. Suicide is the second leading cause of death among teenagers and college-age adults, making a text messaging initiative — started this month by Samaritans Inc. of Massachusetts to supplement the more traditional phone help line — a natural, said one expert. People texting the organization are connected with a volunteer trained in the use of text messaging, and familiar with the grammatical quirks, abbreviations and emoticons used in text messaging. In fact, most of the organization’s volunteers are under 30, with some as young as 16, and are already well-versed in text messaging
What we found is that parents would look at their children’s phones after a suicide and see all the distress their children were experiencing.
Dr. Jill Harkavy-Friedman, vice president of research at the America Foundation for Suicide Prevention
The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline also offers text-messaging help at many of its more than 160 crisis centers nationwide. That organization found that nearly 40 percent of people reaching out for help using its online chat option indicated that they would not feel comfortable seeking help by phone.
