Talk Time Differences Between Interregional and Intraregional Calls to a Crisis Helpline: Statistical Analysis
Robin Turkington, Courtney Potts, Maurice Mulvenna, Raymond Bond, Siobhán O'Neill, Edel Ennis, Katie Hardcastle, Elizabeth Scowcroft, Ciaran Moore, Louise Hamra

TL;DR
This study finds that people who call a crisis helpline stay on the line longer if they are connected to a volunteer in a different region compared to one in the same region.
Contribution
The study reveals that interregional calls to a crisis helpline result in longer call durations than intraregional calls.
Findings
Callers stayed on the line longer when connected to a different region than their own.
Statistical analysis showed significant differences in call durations between interregional and intraregional calls.
These findings suggest routing callers to volunteers in the same region may reduce call duration.
Abstract
National suicide prevention strategies are general population-based approaches to prevent suicide by promoting help-seeking behaviors and implementing interventions. Crisis helplines are one of the suicide prevention resources available for public use, where individuals experiencing a crisis can talk to a trained volunteer. Samaritans UK operates on a national scale, with a number of branches located within each of the United Kingdom’s 4 countries or regions. The aim of this study was to identify any differences in call duration across the helpline service in order to determine whether service varied interregionally and intraregionally and to determine the impact of calls answered in the same region as the caller, compared with calls answered in a different region on the duration of calls made from landlines to Samaritans UK. Calls may be routed by Samaritans, wherein the telephony…
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Taxonomy
TopicsChild and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development · Emergency and Acute Care Studies
