1 - (SYM 52) Third Party Calls to the Veterans Crisis Line: Characteristics of Calls from Family, Friends, Providers, and Acquaintances

Background: Crisis lines such as the National Suicide prevention Lifeline (Lifeline) and the Veterans Crisis Line (VCL) play a central role in the public response to suicide prevention. While research into crisis lines almost exclusively focuses on individuals calling about themselves (see Hoffberg et al., 2020 for review), crisis lines also serve ”third party callers” – family, friends, clinicians, and acquaintances who call on behalf of another individual who may be at risk for suicide and other undesired outcomes (Gould et al., 2022). Research shows that third-party callers compose approximately 25% of calls to Lifeline centers (National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, 2011) and 29% calls to VCL (Britton et al., 2022), highlighting a need to better understand what represents a quarter of crisis line calls. The present study takes a step towards addressing this gap by characterizing third party calls to the VCL.

Methods: The present study is a secondary analysis of a sample of N=135 recordings of third party calls to the VCL in 2019. As part of the larger study of VCL effectiveness, coders examined recordings and rated the callers’ emotional distress, suicidal ideation, and suicidal urgency (i.e., threats) at the beginning and end of the call (King et al., 2003). Responders also recorded key characteristics of the call including presenting problem, suicide risk for persons-of-concern, and any action steps taken by the responder.

Planned Analyses: We will provide descriptives of the callers’ characteristics, presenting problems, and common call outcomes. Multilevel generalized linear modeling will be used to examine pre-post changes in distress over the call.

Planned

Discussion: Results will be used to help understand the most common uses of VCL by third party callers and identify important opportunities to leverage these available, motivated supports. Additionally, results will be compared to previous findings about veterans calling VCL about themselves to explore avenues to tailor responses to the unique needs of third party callers.