After Kathleen Green celebrated her 17th birthday, she got a surprise: she was pregnant.
With no boyfriend by her side and her parents in financial trouble, the shame ate away at her. Green said she suffered from serious depression and had no one to talk to.
“I wanted advice from someone who would know just my point of view. Not my parents’, not my ex-boyfriend’s, just mine,” she said.
With nowhere else to turn, Green picked up the phone and called a crisis hotline for help.
Experts say the number of people calling distress and crisis lines increases every year. Ottawa psychologist David Baxter said anonymity is one reason why people are more willing to share their concerns with volunteers staffing such hotline centres.
“There is still widespread stigma about admitting to or having other people know about a mental health issue, including but not limited to great fear about whether this could jeopardize current or future employment and career opportunities,” Baxter said.
He said a decline in mental health services in Canada might be another reason why more and more people are resorting to call centres. Waiting lists for consultations with professionals are prohibitive, he said.
“An individual in crisis cannot wait for a year or two hoping to be seen by a psychiatrist funded under government health plans,” he said.
Green said the main reason she called was the confidentiality. She felt the volunteers cared about her problems.
“I think the fact that they were listening to me the whole time helped me to calm down and start to deal with it and make decisions,” Green said as she glanced at her daughter, who smiled back from her stroller.
Brigitte Bill, a volunteer coordinator at the Distress Centre of Ottawa and Region, said that “everyone, no matter whether he has support or not, has some skeletons in the closet and prefers to discuss them anonymously.”
Bill said centre volunteers answered more than 37,500 calls in 2007. And the projection is that calls in 2008 will rise by 2,000, which might reflect the fact that the centre’s calling area was enlarged this year.
They’re not all calling over the same problem. Some are suicidal, others have relationship problems or they suffer from depression. But more than 80 per cent of callers are dealing with mental illness, Bill said.
“Some of the people are under- diagnosed and want to share their concerns. We also have calls from people who have been diagnosed, for example with schizophrenia, and want support,” she said.
Bill said that although volunteers are not professionals, they're trained to deal with such calls and can help.
“They take 59 hours of training that includes a suicide prevention course and teaches them how to deal with people with mental illness,” Bill said. “They are taught to be active listeners.”
The centre, which will celebrate its 40th anniversary next year, has about 140 volunteers. With more calls coming in, they are looking to expand their team to answer Ottawa’s cries for help.