Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2022 Jun;52(3):583-595.
doi: 10.1111/sltb.12873. Epub 2022 May 22.

Crisis text-line interventions: Evaluation of texters' perceptions of effectiveness

Madelyn S Gould  1   2 , Anthony Pisani  3 , Carlos Gallo  4 , Ashkan Ertefaie  5 , Donald Harrington  5 , Caroline Kelberman  3 , Shannon Green  6
Affiliations

Crisis text-line interventions: Evaluation of texters' perceptions of effectiveness

Madelyn S Gould et al. Suicide Life Threat Behav. 2022 Jun.

Abstract

Objective: Crisis Text Line (CTL), the largest provider of text-based crisis intervention services in the U.S., has answered nearly 7 million conversations since its inception in 2013. The study's objective was to assess texter's perceptions of the effectiveness of CTL crisis interventions.

Method: Survey data completed by 85,877 texters linked to volunteer crisis counselor (CC) reports from October 12, 2017, to October 11, 2018 were analyzed. The relationship of several effectiveness measures with texters' demographic and psychosocial characteristics, frequency of CTL usage, and texters' perceptions of engagement with their CCs was examined using a series of logistic regression analyses.

Results: By the end of the text-based conversation, nearly 90% of suicidal texters reported that the conversation was helpful, and nearly half reported being less suicidal.

Conclusions: Our study offers evidence for CTL's perceived effectiveness. These findings are of critical importance in light of the launch of a nationwide three-digit number (988) for suicide prevention and mental health crisis supports in the U.S., which will include texting.

Keywords: 988; CTL; crisis interventions; effectiveness; suicide.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

MSG is an uncompensated member of Crisis Text Lines' Clinical Advisory Board. AP and CG are uncompensated members of Crisis Text Lines' Data Advisory Board. AE, DH, and CK have no conflicts to declare. SG is employed by the Crisis Text Line.

References

    1. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (2016). https://www.ahrq.gov/workingforquality/reports/priorities‐in‐focus/prior... - PubMed
    1. Caplan, S. E. , & Turner, J. S. (2007). Bringing theory to research on computer‐mediated comforting communication. Computers in Human Behavior, 23, 985–998.
    1. Cella, D. , Riley, W. , Stone, A. , Rothrock, N. , Reeve, B. , Yount, S. , Amtmann, D. , Bode, R. , Buysse, D. , Choi, S. , Cook, K. , DeVellis, R. , DeWalt, D. , Fries, J. F. , Gershon, R. , Hahn, E. A. , Lai, J.‐S. , Pilkonis, P. , Revicki, D. , … on behalf of the PROMIS Cooperative Group . (2010). The patient‐reported outcomes measurement information system (Promis) developed and tested its first wave of adult self‐reported health outcome item banks: 2005–2008. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 63(11), 1179–1194. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Crisis Text Line (2017). Crisis text line volunteer training textbook.
    1. Crisis Text Line (2022). Crisis trends. https://crisistrends.org/

Publication types