Suicide Hot Line--It’s an Emotional Roller Coaster for Dedicated Volunteers

SAN FRANCISCO —  Claudia Cadera had answered hundreds of calls on the suicide line for the elderly. But nothing prepared her for one woman’s late-night cry for help.

The woman had just taken a lethal dose of pills to end the pain of cancer, but she didn’t want to spend her last hour alone. She asked Cadera just to talk with her.

“I was kind of upset. I didn’t want to be talking to someone who was dying. I did my best to try and talk her out of it,” said Cadera, a volunteer with the 24-hour crisis hot line for senior citizens.

“I regretted later that I was sort of pushing this to get her to change her mind. Maybe I could have just been there for her,” said Cadera, still troubled a month later by the sound of the line going dead.

Life or death decisions--whether to trace a call, just talk, or send for help--are made each day by volunteers at the unusual hot line in a storefront office. Volunteers answer about 15 calls in the early morning hours alone, the shift Cadera has worked once a week for five years.

“The elderly have more, and more intense, losses and they get less support from society in terms of ageism in this culture. There is an attitude, ‘Well, they’re old anyway.’ There is not the same compassion,” said Patrick Arbore, director of the Center for Elderly Suicide Prevention & Grief Related Services, which runs the line.

Volunteers on the “Friendship Line,” as the service is called, are trained for eight weeks in the special needs of the elderly, who have the highest rate of suicide of any U.S. age group.

The line receives about 7,000 calls a year, and volunteers--who include senior citizens--make house visits as well.

“We really make a connection and people really open themselves up and tell you things they never tell anyone because you are not judgmental and because you are their same age--not the age of a son or daughter--but someone they can identify with,” said Cadera, 75.

Founded in 1973, the line subsists on part of a $35,000-a-year city grant it shares with the city’s suicide prevention hot line.

Arbore spent four years calling one despondent man, who initially refused help.

“The first time I called, he said he didn’t want to talk and that the call was of no value. I said, ‘OK, but how about tomorrow?’ He said, ‘It won’t do any good,”’ said Arbore, who had initiated the first call after learning of the man’s suicide attempt.

Arbore continued calling and for two months the man said each time, “It will do no good.”

“But he answered,” Arbore said.

After three years of calls and visits, the man asked for a ride to see his wife at her nursing home and later drove himself to get a haircut, an act that helped him feel independent again.

Calls to the line come from around the nation but primarily from the San Francisco region and include people who are not suicidal, but who are mentally ill or in need of reassurance.

“They seem to be seeking a balance weight, a reality check. They are saying, ‘I think I am all right and I want to touch you and that will help me confirm that the world is still here,’ ” said Cadera.

The job does have its rewards.

“I’m not really doing it for other people. I’m doing it for my own personal growth,” Cadera said.