SINGAPORE: Suicide is the leading cause of death to get young people aged in between 10 and 29 in Singapore. A year ago, 378 people had taken their own lives – nearly a third were in that age group.
This is one of the reasons the Samaritans associated with Singapore (SOS) provides set up a 24-hour WhatsApp service to help those in problems.
Those who need help can textual content 9151 1767 for support through CareText, or contact 1767 to reach the hotline.
Officially launched on Saturday (Sep 10), the service, called CareText, is usually manned by SOS’ trained volunteers plus staff.
Very first piloted in July 2020 on restricted hours, it increased its coverage to run 24/7 in The month of january this year for a demo, before the official launch.
During a survey in 2020, some youths told SOS that there was an insufficient suitable and reliable avenues for them to turn to, said Mr Phua Chun Yat, SOS’ chief operating official.
“We believed (texting) would be a good platform to reach out to youths and try to slow up the barriers of assist seeking, especially at a time where I think there was clearly a lot of uncertainty, people were starting to stay at home due to the pandemic, ” he explained.
Final month, SOS responded almost 1, eight hundred chats – almost triple the number of chats received in August 2021. During the demo, the non-profit organisation found that regarding 82 per cent of the people who messaged had been aged 29 and below.
HOW IT WORKS
Those people using CareText remain anonymous throughout the text conversation and the volunteer or staff member are not able to see the phone numbers.
If a person accesses CareText, they will be first questioned basic questions, like gender, age group plus their distress level.
“Those questions … help us kind of know who we are talking to, ” explained Mr John Lam, senior manager associated with crisis support from SOS.
“After that, they are engaged by our trained volunteers and staff. We have been using the same technique that we are using for the hotline, but modified for texting.
“Our volunteers practise active listening. It is important we pay attention to their problems – the pain points.
“We do accept there are suicide dangers, and we do ask them if they are contemplating suicide. The conversation can be as long as they want. The aim is to de-escalate the crisis they are facing at that point in time. ”
There are currently about 100 CareText volunteers and all of them possess undergone about 6 months of training.
These volunteers have to learn how to understand each texter, reflect back on which they say and the feelings they are going through.
Texts come in throughout the day and peak from 4pm to 2am, Mr Lam said. Usually text chats last longer than phone calls, a service which usually SOS provides via a suicide prevention servicenummer. Some text communication can go on for more than an hour.