When a call about suicide is received on the Telephone of Hope in Spain, the person who performs it does not want to stop living, but to stop suffering, to look for a way out of the suffering he is suffering for some reason.
Josefina Sants and Jesús Lázaro are two of the volunteers of this telephone helpline, where 4,935 calls were answered last year on this matter, 55 percent more than in 2019.
Sants is a doctor and responsible for this organization of volunteering and social action in Córdoba (southern Spain) and attributes this increase to “a cluster of confinement and everything we are going through” by the covid-19 pandemic.
This has led to “increased emotional problems on a general level, both personal and relational,” he adds.
Lázaro, who is a psychologist, clarifies that the fact that there has been such a significant increase in calls of this type must not have influenced a possible increase in cases of death of his own volition.
Based on statistics from years ago, Lazarus states that the “increase in suicidal ideation calls does not mean that it translates into suicidal behaviors,” so that the person really does not want to die, what he wants is to stop suffering and seeks in suicide the way out of this suffering. “
This is also understood by Santos, for whom “the person who has the idea of something suicidal is not because he wants to stop living, but because he is suffering so much that what he wants is to end his life to stop suffering.”
PANDEMIC INCREASES RISK
In the opinion of the psychologist, with the pandemic situation “people who had a previous history have been exacerbated, by isolation, by lack of resources, by their previous beliefs, then isolation has increased depression” .
The Hope Phone is preparing for International Suicide Prevention Day (September 10) with the idea that “the pandemic has significantly increased the risk factors associated with suicidal behavior, so prevention is more necessary than ever “.
“We make an intervention in crisis, let’s say it’s a first shock, a first brake on the ideation” of suicide, says Jesus Lazarus.
“If they tell us, we try to get the person to verbalize what’s happening to them and, through active listening, we try to get them to vent, to vent their emotions and then see where we put those reasons for living, whether there are alternatives or not. help him find them, ”he explains.
If not, “we can give him some alternative,” he continues, “so that he sees that suicide is not the answer.”
SEARCH FOR ALTERNATIVES
For the time necessary, because the call to the Telephone of Hope has no limit of duration, the volunteers try to calm the other person down until he manages to ‘reason’ and no longer resort to suicide as the solution to his problem.
It is “a first barrier of containment,” although “it does not mean that we solve the problems, much less, but we act so that this moment is postponed,” according to Lazarus.
According to Sants, what encourages a person who has a suicidal idea or who has made the decision to commit suicide to dial the phone number of Hope is company or the relief of their suffering.
One advantage is that this is a completely anonymous call, “as a key to hope for not getting to where you are planning to get to,” he concludes.