The Telephone to the Rescue
Used to be, if you were going through personal problems you might visit a priest. People with more money than faith would often see a shrink. Then in 1953, an English vicar had an epiphany. Why not create a “hotline” where people contemplating suicide could ring up a counselor anytime they were feeling blue? No charge.
Good Samaritans
Reverend Varah called his brainchild “The Samaritans” after the gospel parable about a solid citizen who renders aid to a roadside mugging victim after several religious types devoutly elected not to get involved. The English pastor had recently heard the alarming statistic that in the city of London there was an average of three suicides each day. Pastor Varah believed that this number could be significantly decreased if despondent people could reach for something other than a pistol or a bottle of pills.
Pastor Varah saw to it that they could now reach for the phone.
Varah recruited untrained church volunteers to simply listen to these unhappy callers and help shoulder their burdens. Being there for people was all he required of these 20th Century Samaritans. Having someone to talk to seemed to be exactly what these distressed souls required. 10 years later, there were 40 chapters of Samaritans in Great Britain. By 1974, the Samaritan movement had spread to the U.S. Today, you can find active chapters all along the eastern seaboard.
Suicide PreventionWest Coast Style
While Reverend Varah’s compassionate little flock was busy helping unhappy Brits keep a stiff upper lip, a secular group in Los Angeles, California started a similar concept called the Los Angeles Suicide Prevention Center. Then in 1962, San Francisco Suicide launched a program, dubbed “Call Bruce.” Like the British innovation, Call Bruce sought to give depressed Californians a real person to talk to. Bay residents rang up Bruce and Bruce listened. It was like a healing balm from above.
24/7
Yankee ingenuity stepped up the suicide prevention game by manning phone lines, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.Soon crisis hotline numbers were plastered on billboards, bus cards and bathroom walls. Volunteers everywhere stepped up to simply listen to hurting folks offload their problems.
Although critics dismissed these fledgling efforts as misguided philanthropy––failing to reach the seriously suicidal––the evidence suggests otherwise. A 2007 study revealed that conversing with a hotline counselor not only reduced the impulse to commit suicide during the phone call, but resulted in fewer suicidal thoughts in the intervening weeks.
All kinds of trouble
Since the advent of suicide hotlines, other emergency lines have been created by special interest groups to counsel runaways, abuse victims, problem pregnancies and those wrestling with sexual identity. Many are available with 24-hour counselors. Some of these are licensed therapists. Others are just regular folks with two listening ears and one good heart. But the work they do is God’s work. Reverend Varah is sure of that.
If you would like find the suicide prevention hotline in your area call National Suicide Hotlines USA at 1-800-SUICIDE or visit them online at suicidehotlines.com.
Questions and Answers
Tired of waiting for your teenager to get off the phone? Want to add a second line for a computer? It’s an easy enough task for the ambitious do-it-yourselfer. All it takes is a few basic tools and a box of Band-Aids®. Seriously, it is not that hard.
These days more and more home phones come with a built-in voicemail function. It’s like having an invisible answering machine at your house. The only problem is, like the old-school answering machine, these built-in mailboxes require that most humiliating of tasks: recording your voicemail greeting.
I have a friend who believes in psychics. I am always telling him if this psychic stuff is real, why do they ask “Who may I say is calling?” when they answer the phone. My friend’s comeback is always the same. Psychics don’t answer their own phones. They use mere mortals to do that.
During the Cold War, school kids had frequent “bomb drills” where they learned how to, in a calm and orderly manner, slide under their desks and put their hands over their heads. How this was going to protect us from a thermo-nuclear holocaust is anyone’s guess. The point is, we ran the drill. We were prepared for the worst. Today, large companies develop comprehensive evacuation plans, appoint floor captains and conduct regular “fire drills.” The day the building is engulfed in flames, that com
There are many reasons why businesses should consider providing their customers with a toll free number. They are cost effective for both the business and the consumer, they will help to extend the reach of the business, and they can even provide a single point of contact for consumers so that they can be guaranteed a consistent experience with every call.
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Estonia has emerged as one of the world's most dynamic and modern free market economies. Its flat tax system and tax exemption rules for undistributed company profits have attracted vast amounts of foreign investment capital. The requirement to balance the country's annual budget is written into the constitution which means that the national debt is a mere 6% of GDP.
I have a friend who believes in psychics. I am always telling him if this psychic stuff is real, why do they ask “Who may I say is calling?” when they answer the phone. My friend’s comeback is always the same. Psychics don’t answer their own phones. They use mere mortals to do that.
Can’t decide what to get yourself this holiday? How about a new home phone? Spoil yourself. Make it a cordless. There are quite a few new ones on the market. Why not add one of these to the Christmas list?
These days more and more home phones come with a built-in voicemail function. It’s like having an invisible answering machine at your house. The only problem is, like the old-school answering machine, these built-in mailboxes require that most humiliating of tasks: recording your voicemail greeting.
During the Cold War, school kids had frequent “bomb drills” where they learned how to, in a calm and orderly manner, slide under their desks and put their hands over their heads. How this was going to protect us from a thermo-nuclear holocaust is anyone’s guess. The point is, we ran the drill. We were prepared for the worst. Today, large companies develop comprehensive evacuation plans, appoint floor captains and conduct regular “fire drills.” The day the building is engulfed in flames, that com
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