24-hour suicide hotline set to launch

A local nonprofit organization will launch the city's first 24-hour suicide prevention hotline as early as late November, Youth Daily reported Sunday.

The hotline, which will be devoted exclusively to suicide prevention, will extend suicide counseling services in the city to nights and early morning hours, which are the times when it is most in need.

The nonprofit, LCI center, will provide the volunteer-staffed hotline at no cost to callers, said Huang Shan, who is in charge of the hotline. The hotline will be available at the number 5161-9995.

"Although Shanghai has several organizations that sponsor hotlines for psychological counseling, none provides the service 24 hours a day. It is very important that residents can get psychological help at night because many people feel a stronger desire to commit suicide after they return home from work," Huang told the Global Times.

The Shanghai Mental Health Center and the China Communist Youth League Shanghai Committee also run hotlines, but they are for broader psychological assistance, Huang said.

A well-known suicide prevention hotline is essential in Shanghai, where people live under a high degree of stress, said Wang Yuru, secretary general of the Shanghai Psychological Counseling Association.

Wang said that the association does not have statistics on the total number of suicides or suicide attempts in the city and no local agency tracks the data.

Most suicide data in the city comes in bits and pieces. The Shanghai Municipal Education Bureau reported in early February that 13 students from either elementary or junior high schools killed themselves last year, up from 8 students in 2010.

LCI plans to advertise the hotline in places where suicides are widely reported. "We will stick our number in metro stations so more people will know about us," Huang said.

Wang pointed out that the hotline will face its share of problems. "They could have trouble without government support; they may have problems financing themselves and finding enough qualified staff members," she told the Global Times.

Several years ago, a local hospital in Pudong New Area launched a hotline devoted to suicide prevention, but Youth Daily reported that the service had been discontinued because it did not get approval from municipal health authorities.

LCI has already had to delay launching the hotline due to staffing issues. "We planned to recruit 200 staff member and launch the hotline in March, but we postponed the opening because not enough volunteers had applied," he said.

The hotline now has 50 people with national psychological counseling certificates who have applied to work for the phones, and Huang plans to recruit another 50. Four counselors will be on each shift. If more than four people call at the same time, their calls will be transferred to the mobile phones of backup staff members, Huang said.