Thank you, Star-Advertiser, for your coverage of the dropped calls on the state’s ACCESS Line. You clearly demonstrated that the hotline fails to serve those it was intended to serve. (By the way, ACCESS is not just a suicide line, but a crisis line designed to give services and immediate assessment to all people in need.)
It seems that state problems get fixed faster due to the attention of journalists or federal intervention.
What might not be known is that the state’s Adult Mental Health Division funded, then closed, a "warm line" — a telephone service for troubled people who needed to talk with someone who could lend a helpful and compassionate ear.
Dr. Tom Hester, then director of Adult Mental Health, wanted a warm line created because he’d received many requests from citizens who needed a phone-in support service for times when they were troubled and depressed. As you know, depression can lead to suicide — in fact, it’s estimated that 90 percent of people who commit suicide suffered from depression.
The state chose United Self Help (USH) to operate the warm line, which USH did at a cost of only $31,340 a year to the state.
Then, after three years of funding the warm line, the state dropped the service to save money.
The $31,340 annually paid for 14 mental health consumers, people who’d experienced emotional and mental challenges and were trained to help others who experience those challenges. The health consumers answered phone calls from 4:30 to 9 p.m. seven days a week.
USH handled more than 700 calls per month, calls from people who might otherwise have tied up the already overburdened ACCESS Line.
The service provided by the USH mental-health consumers had several advantages:
» It was inexpensive — only $31,340 a year for a 4:30-9 p.m. warm line seven days a week. Can’t beat that.
» It provided lonely people at risk for worsening depression not just a resource but also an actual human being to talk with. A few of them wrote letters to say such things as: Thank you for being there at night when I need you. I have no one else to talk to.
» It gave part-time jobs of answering the warm line to more than 21 people (two on a shift at $8 an hour each) dealing with their own mental health challenges, which increased their confidence and provided the self-esteem to seek higher-paying jobs.
» When the ACCESS line was busy and citizens in need could not get through, an automated ACCESS Line instructed them to call the USH warm line if the person was not in crisis. If USH mental-health consumers determined a caller to be in crisis, they would talk to the caller until the ACCESS Line was available.
» The warm line gave those in need of mental health support an alternative to the ACCESS service and provided a service that plugged an ACCESS weakness: the need for lengthy, reflective talking with callers.
» It gave callers an opportunity to talk to trained mental-health consumers who had experienced similar situations.
» When USH warm line personnel needed assistance on a call, the call could be transferred to their supervisor who had a master’s degree in social work (myself).
Despite the loss of state funding, USH continued with a much-curtailed warm line, staffed by one volunteer.
Restoring the USH warm line is an inexpensive solution to the severe problems Adult Mental Health now experiences because of a critically over-burdened ACCESS Line that cannot meet the mental health needs of Hawaii’s citizens.
The warm line worked efficiently, providing citizens optimum benefit for the tax dollars invested in mental health services.
We urge Adult Mental Health to reinstate a program requested by citizens in need — a program that one Adult Mental Health director acknowledged not only lightened the load but provided needed support that ACCESS was unable to provide.
