Crisis Lines Making A Comeback With Youth

Many years ago back in the 70’s, I was a counsellor and trainer for volunteers in a small town in BC. During the day I handled drop ins and our volunteers took over the line at night and on weekends.

Over 50 wonderful souls took the training assisted by Mental Health in order to handle the demand. And they all benefited since they learned a lot about themselves and how humans handle emotional issues.

That experience also helped me and of all the jobs I took on in the realm of community service, this was my favourite. The reason is simple, I could see real results in front of my eyes to suggest we were making a positive difference.

So to know that service is there now for youth and others is very gratifying because talking something out with a human always is a good suggestion since it frees up the mind and relieves stress. I don’t think that need ever went away in spite of new technology.

Our young people are now understanding that AI or other people on a website who do not care about you is not the place to get valuable answers when there is so much on the line. Humans always will fill that void in a special way.

An AI has been programmed to be agreeable, not to be helpful in making life decisions. And telling youth this when it first came out made no difference. Now they know after much experimentation, that this form of tech is fun but limited and prone to errors and misunderstandings.

Therefore taking a service that is reached by phone makes sense since all youth carry around phones because they want constant contact. It is also anonymous, something they hoped to have on websites when commenting but trolls spoiled the experience and belittled those feelings.

Trained personnel handle these calls and genuinely care. This obviously is getting results. Once again kids and others have a place to go to get help. Sometimes a good thing just has to be recognized once again.