Crisis Center touches troubled people online through chat service

On Nov. 26, a mother and teacher who thought about killing herself thanked the people behind a new online crisis chat service - which includes an Iowa City team - for saving her life.

“At the time, I was in intense pain and desperate to end the pain,” the anonymous woman wrote in her online testimonial, explaining that she had started taking pills when she went to crisischat.org for help.

A worker with the web-based crisis response service requested a welfare check on the woman.

“Because of her actions, my children still have a mother, my mom still has a daughter, my students still have a teacher. ... I still have a life.”

Iowa City is one of 10 crisis centers across the country now fielding online chat requests through crisischat.org, which invites anyone needing emotional support or feeling suicidal to log on.

The service, which was launched on a smaller scale in 2010 and continues to expand as more centers come on board, has been flooded with requests, including many from younger and more-technology savvy clients.

Iowa City's team of crisis chatters, through the Crisis Center of Johnson County, became an official part of the national crisis chat service in August. The local hub handles about one-third of the total chat requests that come into crisischat.org, but there still are plenty of chat requests that don't get answered, said Becci Reedus, executive director of the local Crisis Center.

In an effort to help meet the growing demand, the Crisis Center recently received a $10,000 grant to expand its crisis chat services. Starting in March, the organization will begin training new volunteers in hopes of adding hours to the service that aims not to replace the popular crisis phone lines but provide another option for people more comfortable using the Internet.

“One of the reasons we opted to go online is because teens and young adults don't tend to use the telephone,” said Mary Drexler, executive director for Connecticut-based Contact USA, which is overseeing and managing the service.

Students dealing with bullying issues and teenagers in abusive relationships feel more comfortable discussing their issues online than over the phone, Drexler said, and more than 70 percent of the crisis chat traffic to date is coming from teenagers and young adults.

“Some of it has related to bullying, some of it related to domestic violence and dating violence,” Drexler said.

Chat conversations so far have involved more serious issues - suicide plans or suicides in progress - as many people feel more willing to be vulnerable with the added layer of anonymity that the Internet provides, according to Drexler.

In Iowa City, officials said that while less than 5 percent of the calls to the crisis hotline involved suicide, about 50 percent of the chat requests are suicidal in nature.

The crisis chat service operates between noon and midnight seven days a week, but the goal is to make it available 24-hours a day. Iowa City's trained chatters are online between 2 and 8 p.m., and Drexler said more centers will be operating like Iowa City's by the end of this year.

Additional workers have to be trained because online counseling differs from taking crisis calls - you can't tell a person's tone over the Internet, for example, Drexler said.

“And chats can run long,” she said. “A phone call can last 10 to 30 minutes, but a chat can go on for a good hour or longer.”

Kylie Van Zee, 22, of Iowa City, started out her volunteer service with the Crisis Center of Johnson County taking phone calls on the crisis line. But she since has dedicated herself to the chat service and said she's had several emotional experiences behind the screen.

“I usually find the chat subjects to be more intense,” she said. “They are dealing with suicide or depression or cutting.”

Some of the clients have been 13-year-olds dealing with bullying at school or problems with friends and family. One of the most intense experiences Van Zee recalls having on the chat website involved a man who was set on committing suicide.

“I realized I was not going to change his mind,” she said. “So my role in that case was just to validate his feelings and his life. That was emotional.”

“This is definitely important,” Van Zee said before logging on Thursday to help anyone in crisis, “especially for people who are not comfortable talking to others. They can talk to us.”

Suicide rates

(Per 100,000 people)

2009

Johnson County --14.5

Linn County --10

Iowa -- 12

Nation -- 12

Crisischat.net chats

Februar --197

March --349

April --851

May --889

June --917

July --699

August --1,590

September --1,618

October -- 1,270

Source: Contact USA

2008

Johnson County 14.1

Linn County 6.7

Iowa 12.5

National 11.8

Sources: Iowa Department of Public Health, the American Association of Suicidiology and crisischat.org