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August 6, 2004/Av 19 5763, Vol. 55, No. 46
Teens in turmoil turn to peer counselors
BETH OLSON
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Teen Lifeline volunteers work the phones at the crisis hotline for youth from 3-9 p.m., 365 days a year.
Photo by Beth Olson |
What you actually see, however, is a group of teens lounging on couches in a room that bears close resemblance to anyone's family room, with comfortable furniture, a television, movies, video games and board games. Off in the corner is a door to the room where the peer counselors take calls, a small office plastered with names and numbers of referral services for teens.
The 32 Teen Lifeline teen volunteers staff the crisis hotline from 3-9 p.m., 365 days per year. The peer counselors, ages 15-21, participate in 70 hours of initial training that includes the presentation of information about teen issues such as sexuality and pregnancy, abuse, suicide, substance abuse and more from the onsite staff, videos and specialists from a variety of local agencies, as well as role playing with the current teen volunteers. Once the initial training is complete, an individualized program is created for each teen by Intervention Specialist Nikki Kontz before they can start taking calls.
"They work with me to find out what they need to do to get to the point where they're comfortable taking calls," Kontz says. "Everyone takes a different amount of time. We have some trainees who've been here a year and are still working on it and others who get on the phones immediately."
In training, the volunteers learn to guide the callers through the decision-making process and give referrals to agencies that can be of assistance to the teens. They never provide advice to the callers.
Teen Lifeline was started in 1986 to address the problem of teen suicide in Arizona - which at the time was second in the nation for the number of completed suicides by teens, according to Michelle Moorhead, executive director of the organization.
Originally a program of Southwest Behavioral Health Services, Teen Lifeline merged with Terros - a behavioral health organization widely known for its substance abuse programs - after 10 years. Two years later the program became independent and received 501(c)3 status in January 2000.
Last October, the statewide Teen Lifeline became the first peer counseling hotline to be certified by the American Association of Suicidology.
"If you are dealing with young people or you are a teenager and you're having a hard time and you're in crisis, we are the number you should be calling. We're the people who want to help," Kontz says. "The thing that makes what we do so amazing is that we use teenagers in the delivery of the service."
And while Moorhead says Teen Lifeline is trying to steer away from being thought of as a suicide hotline but rather a crisis line, Kontz reports that the largest percentage of calls - 22 percent - are for depression and suicide.
The volunteers are unscheduled and come in to work as many, or as few, shifts as they care to work. According to Kontz, it is rare that none of the volunteers come in, and she says that all she has to do is make a phone call and they come right in if needed.
The average length of stay for the volunteers - 25 percent of whom are Jewish - is three and a half years, and many who go away to college come back during school breaks.
The peer counselors, who use aliases to protect their identities, get a great deal of support from the staff members at Teen Lifeline. In addition to the training and the processing of calls with the volunteers when they're finished, the staff members serve as mentors and counselors to the teens about issues in their own lives.
"They see us as mentors to them but not in a parental role - not in a way where they feel judged or they feel like they're always being corrected. For some of them, it's the first supportive authority they've ever seen," Kontz says.
And the volunteers appreciate the support.
"As peer counselors, we support the callers and the counselors support us," says Veronica, an 18-year-old graduate of Chaparral High School, who will be attending Occidental College in the fall.
Veronica (who, like all the teens, uses an alias to protect her identity), has volunteered at Teen Lifeline for nearly two years. She says she's sad to be leaving and wishes she started working at the hotline when she was 15. Her interest in working at the hotline was piqued after watching an episode of the '80s sitcom "Family Ties," in which one of the characters worked at a teen hotline.
Helping others is in Veronica's genes - her father is a high school counselor and the two of them volunteer weekly serving food at St. Vincent de Paul. Veronica started volunteering as a child when her mother was the executive director of Temple Solel.
"(Volunteering) has always been really valued in our family. I think it's really important and I really enjoy it," she says.
In addition to staffing the hotline, Veronica works as a peer educator, going into the community with Teen Lifeline staff to talk to parents, teachers and teens about the program.
Veronica says she loves the comfortable, supportive environment at Teen Lifeline and she looks forward to coming each week and relaxing and reconnecting with her friends. That's not to say that the job isn't challenging, she says.
"Sometimes you'll get those really hard calls - rape calls, suicide, abuse - and they just stay with you, bother you," she says. "It's comforting to know that you are there for them. At least they had somebody to talk to and at least they took their own initiative and called in. All problems can't be solved, but they got to unload it on somebody else."
And while sometimes she says she goes home burdened with the calls she's taken, Veronica says, "more often I feel good about it, that I did something for the benefit of other people."
Each of the five full-time and seven part-time staffers at the hotline are master's level certified clinicians, and it's part of their responsibility to make sure that the peer counselors get the right kind of support.
"We don't want the volunteer going home at the end of the night and feeling like the weight of the world is on their shoulders," Moorhead says. "We want them to feel good about what they did on the hotline, but we also want them to go home feeling OK about being able to come back and do it again."
Another volunteer, 17-year-old Mallory, is also a recent high school graduate. A former student at Desert Vista High School in Ahwatukee, she has made the weekly trek to the downtown Phoenix office since October.
Mallory, who plans to study pre-law at Arizona State University in the fall, says she gets the most satisfaction from taking calls from teens with parental problems.
"I've been through tough times with my parents," she says. "I love my parents very much, but they recently went through a divorce, so when I talk to people who are going through the same thing, I connect with them."
While Mallory and Veronica are high-achieving, active teens that may seem to represent the typical volunteer, Kontz is careful to point out that the volunteers are all different types of teens and many of them admit that if it wasn't for Teen Lifeline, they probably wouldn't be friends.
"They come from everywhere and every group (and) ... they come here and they become friends and hang out outside of school," Kontz says. "They offer just as much support to each other as they do to the caller."
Call Teen Lifeline at 602-248-8336 or (800) 248-8336.