An evaluation of suicide prevention hotline results in Taiwan: Caller profiles and the effect on emotional distress and suicide risk

Background: Hotlines are among commonly available and recommended suicide prevention strategies in many countries, but only a few empirical studies have focused on people who used this service and the proximal outcomes of calls made to the hotlines. This study is designed to investigate the demographic characteristics of the Taiwan National Suicide Prevention Hotline (NSPH) callers and whether the NSPH service helps to alleviate the callers' emotional distress and suicide risk. Methods: Descriptive statistics were used to describe the gender, age and county/city distribution of the 63,696 callers from 2009 to 2011. Three hundred telephone records of 100 acute suicidal callers, 100 suicidal callers, and 100 non-suicidal callers were then randomly selected for further investigation of the proximal changes in the callers' emotional disturbance and suicidally. Results: Notwithstanding the suicide status of the callers, significant decreases in their emotional distress and suicidally could be detected during the course of the telephone session. Men, the elderly, and people living outside northern Taiwan, however, were less likely to call the NSPH. An unexpected yet significant finding is that people with an ongoing suicide attempt were less emotionally distressed than those with only suicidal thoughts. Conclusions: The hotline is a useful suicide preventive and crisis intervention service. However, further creative and consistent work is needed to make the service more appealing to the hard-to-reach population.