One year ago, Congress defunded public media. Now that we're 100% community funded, please become a sustaining member or increase your existing membership today.
Local Nonprofit Acquires Teen-To-Teen Crisis Line With Plans To Expand
Teen Line counselors Lily Kramon (L) and Jonathan Gelfond (R) completed 65 hours of training and months of shadowing so they could support their peers over calls and texts.
(
Robert Garrova / LAist
)
Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services, the Los Angeles-based nonprofit that helps run the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, announced Thursday that it’s acquiring Teen Line, a youth-led mental health crisis line.
Didi Hirsch CEO Lyn Morris told a press conference the acquisition will allow Teen Line to train more youth to staff the crisis line, which currently takes calls between 6 p.m. - 10 p.m. PT every night.
If you need immediate help
If you or someone you know is in crisis and need immediate help, call the Suicide Prevention Lifeline by dialing 988 or go here for online chat.
Find 5 Action Steps for helping someone who may be suicidal, from the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.
Six questions to ask to help assess the severity of someone's suicide risk, from the Columbia Lighthouse Project.
To prevent a future crisis, here's how to help someone make a safety plan.
Teen Line, which started in 1980, trains between 60-80 L.A.-based youth a year to answer calls from their peers who may be experiencing a mental health crisis.
Lily Kramon, a 17-year-old Teen Line volunteer, completed 65 hours of training and months of observing calls and texts before she took her first call from a peer.
“I think it’s definitely loneliness that comes up a lot,” Kramon said. “And I think that definitely relates to the pandemic and also just being on our phones a lot and being isolated.”
Kramon said she talks with a lot of teens who tell her they don’t know who to reach out to when they need mental health support and often keep their struggles to themselves.
Sponsored message
“So many people call having never talked about what they went through,” she said.
Teen Line COO Cheryl Eskin said the young counselors have helped close to 1,000 teens who called reporting thoughts of suicide during the past year, and have supported numerous other peers dealing with everything from anxiety to child abuse.
During the worst of the COVID-19 stay-at-home orders, Kramon and her colleagues went remote, answering calls from home. For Kramon, that meant sitting in her bedroom supporting her peers in crisis through a laptop computer screen and a phone. But she, too, found the calls helpful.
“I didn’t get to see my friends, I didn’t get to see my peers, so there on the phone I was making a connection with someone, so that was special and that was helpful for me,” said Kramon.
Didi Hirsch’s push to train more teen counselors comes after U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy issued a stark warning last year in an Advisory on Protecting Youth Mental Health.
In the advisory, Murthy cited global research that found “depressive and anxiety symptoms doubled during the pandemic.”
One year ago, Congress voted to defund public media, eliminating a critical $1.7 million from our budget every year going forward. But they couldn’t silence us, and we’re not going anywhere. LAist is now 100% community funded and that means we’re taking our future into our own hands and turning to you to keep local reporting strong.
You come to LAist because you want independent reporting and trustworthy local information. Our nonprofit newsroom doesn’t answer to shareholders looking to turn a profit. Instead, we answer to you and our communities. We are free to follow facts wherever they lead and to hold power to account without fear or favor. Our only loyalty is to our readers and listeners and our mission: to inform, engage, and strengthen Southern California’s communities.
If this story helped you, please become a monthly member today to help sustain this mission. It just takes 1 minute to donate below.
You come to LAist because you want independent reporting and trustworthy local information. Our nonprofit newsroom doesn’t answer to shareholders looking to turn a profit. Instead, we answer to you and our communities. We are free to follow facts wherever they lead and to hold power to account without fear or favor. Our only loyalty is to our readers and listeners and our mission: to inform, engage, and strengthen Southern California’s communities.
If this story helped you, please become a monthly member today to help sustain this mission. It just takes 1 minute to donate below.
Senior Vice President News, Editor in Chief
