How to handle a suicidal phone call
People who are contemplating suicide are more likely to call someone as their last call than anyone else. Depending on the way the person they are calling speaks, they may or may not commit suicide. I received about 400 calls during the Telangana movement. Of these, 20% are serious suicide cases. Even after that, dozens of such calls keep coming. It takes professional knowledge, skills, and utmost care to handle these.
Whenever a celebrity dies, they give their numbers to everyone on social media and tell them to talk to me if they feel like committing suicide. Their intention to save lives is commendable. But if you really call them on time, it is doubtful whether they will address that phone call carefully. In the heat of the moment, they post and get excited. They may forget about it in a few days. Remember, when the call comes, they are in a different mood, or they are busy with their personal life or business, so the chances of handling the phone call properly are low.
EXISTENTIALISM SUICIDES ABSURD| How to handle a suicidal phone call
In fact, the first problem with these phone calls is that they do not come with any advance warning. Then they do not know what mood we are in or how urgent we are. Many times they come in the middle of the night and in the early hours of the morning. We have to attend to that phone call no matter what state we are in. Secondly, not all of these phone calls are serious suicidal calls. Most of these come for attention seeking. It is not an easy task to filter them and handle only the serious suicidal calls.
Those who attend these phone calls need to know the types of suicides. The same strategy does not work for all types of suicides. Especially in the case of those whose chemical balance in the brain is disturbed, we need to be very careful and alert those close to them. Based on their words, we should be able to assess whether they are in general depression or have a chemical imbalance. Also, we should deal with suicide attempts made to threaten them very carefully. If we provoke them, we will actually be the reason for them to commit suicide. Otherwise, it will not be possible to meet their demands.
Now, when talking to them, we should first be able to assess their attitude. We should assess their attitude towards society, towards life, towards money, career, and towards life partner and be careful not to speak against it. Emotions always increase when we hear an argument that is contrary to their attitude. We do not have prior information about their attitude. However, we should assess it at that time and take appropriate precautions. If we do not argue with some people, there are chances that they will hang up the phone saying, “You are listening to my words silently.”
People who are about to commit suicide talk a lot. We should listen to their words carefully. Otherwise, we should not agree or disagree with their argument. They have the opportunity to hang up the phone when they suspect that we are not listening carefully or are just listening to them. We can reduce their emotions by talking to them for as long as possible. We should explore other ways to save them while talking to them on the phone. We should be able to provide information to those close to them.
Then, we should consider ways to weaken their decision to kill themselves. If it is tablets, how powerful are they? How can they work, where are the hospitals and police stations near them, we should gather information while talking to them. When foreigners make such calls, this task becomes even more challenging. These are just a few. If we were to write down everything in detail, it would take a book. They say that we will talk to whomever they tell us how to talk to. But explaining it is not that easy. This has a lot of psychological implications. It is like landing a plane in an emergency. There is no runway there. We must land in the fields, along the bank of the river, or on any plain. There is no script. A plane that deviates only slightly will crash. The pilot has to make decisions from time to time while assessing the situation and landing it. After doing so, if a passenger asks, ‘Can you tell me how to land that plane?’ In that case, the pilot’s situation is the same as my situation in explaining psychological matters to ordinary people.
#HariRaghav
