theres a lot more diversity of opinion here re: hotlines than i expected, thank you everyone! im pleasantly surprised to hear some people do find them genuinely helpful, especially for pointing out:
To answer the question... yea, they do help some people; people who aren't really suicidal but crave a comforting voice. And they also help people who are experiencing a very acute, sometimes spontaneous and intense desire to commit suicide, who will benefit from being talked out of it and will probably not be suicidal ever again or for a long time.
I think hotlines serve a very specific purpose to help a very specific group of people who are in acute crisis situations and are suicidal due to transient life circumstances. These people don't actually want to die- they just want the immediate pain to stop and they want someone to listen to them. After that, these people likely feel better and don't end up carrying out any plans to ctb. In fact, they probably didn't have any plan to begin with- they're just in a crisis situation and needed someone to talk them down from doing anything drastic or impulsive....So yes, hotlines do help people and they do serve a purpose. But, they're not a long term solution and they won't help everyone who's suicidal, nor are they really meant to
this is absolutely something i can envision and need to be reminded of; there are situations where people act impulsively that result in fatality (ie if they have access to a firearm) or some other serious harm.
i think this thread also serves to remind me, as Idlzrs pointed out that the function of hotlines is NOT to help people, it is exclusively to prevent death in that moment. with that in mind, it makes sense that this is more helpful to some people than others; intervening to prevent death in the moment isnt helpful for those of us who are longterm seriously suicidal, but it is helpful for the category of people discussed above who might otherwise hurt themselves on impulse.
Yes, I get benefit out of using hotlines.
Maybe I'm a lot worse off than most people here, but even having someone just listen to me describe my issues and then say something like, "I'm sorry this is happening to you and that sucks," makes a big difference for me when I'm struggling to endure something without doing anything stupid or reckless. They're not there to solve my problems or take any of the pain away or even necessarily help, just acknowledge my existence and whatever I'm going through at that moment. Sometimes these are only conversations I'll have with somebody outside of the house for weeks or months.
i have a difficult time believing this is a matter of being worse off than anyone else; it strikes me more to do with what kind of help people need, which hotlines arent really equipped to deal with on a case by case basis. talking to the hotline operators is evidently genuinely helpful to some people; on the flipside, its been a disappointing or actively harmful experience for me/others in thread to reach out and find that the help offered isnt helpful for them. but again, the point isnt really to help, just to prevent death in the moment.
That said, after years of the "just call this number and they can help :3" rhetoric, I can't fault anyone for being disappointed in what a hotline had to offer them. They're unpaid volunteers being hoisted on this weird pedestal and I feel like at least half the people who urge others to "Just Reach Out" and "Make The Call" have no idea what hotlines are actually capable of doing for someone.
Society and the masses as a whole, yes you are on point that it is just like "a bandaid so we can act like something is being done without addressing the reasons people reach that point to begin with." This is akin to virtue signaling, things that serve no purpose nor help the situation and only serves to boost the egos of the masses.
i see more value in hotlines than i did prior to making this thread, but im simultaneously more convinced they do indeed function as a bandaid. sure, we want to help people--but only the narrow range of people for whom this structure is helpful. sure, we want to help people--but not enough to pay qualified professionals to do it. is it better than nothing? probably, but it seems odd that the societal consensus is that its the best we can do.
one thing i am 100% in favor of: doing away with nonconsensual intervention. after reading responses here i believe there might be plenty of people (more than i had imagined) who are longterm/chronically/passively suicidal and would benefit from just talking to someone, but either dont call or can't talk openly for fear of having authorities called because they have a method in mind, etc. cops are not equipped to respond appropriately to someone in crisis anyways and can actively make things worse.
