Veterans Crisis Line Call Outcomes: Distress, Suicidal Ideation, and Suicidal Urgency

This study evaluates the effectiveness of the Veterans Crisis Line on immediate call outcomes (i.e., caller distress, suicidal ideation, and suicidal urgency) for veterans who provide identifying information. Coders rated pre- and post-distress, suicidal ideation, and suicidal urgency for 647 calls...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:American journal of preventive medicine 2022-05, Vol.62 (5), p.745-751
Main Authors: Britton, Peter C., Karras, Elizabeth, Stecker, Tracy, Klein, John, Crasta, Dev, Brenner, Lisa A., Pigeon, Wilfred R.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Clinical outcomes
Crises
Crisis intervention
Generalizability
Hotlines
Humans
Linear analysis
Mental health care
Prevention
Psychological distress
Reliability
Reproducibility of Results
Risk Factors
Suicidal Ideation
Suicide
Suicide, Attempted
Suicides & suicide attempts
Telephone hotlines
Urgency
Veterans
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Summary:This study evaluates the effectiveness of the Veterans Crisis Line on immediate call outcomes (i.e., caller distress, suicidal ideation, and suicidal urgency) for veterans who provide identifying information. Coders rated pre- and post-distress, suicidal ideation, and suicidal urgency for 647 calls from 2019 veteran callers. Intraclass correlation coefficients examined inter-rater reliability. Multilevel generalized linear modeling examined pre–post changes. Inter-rater reliability was good for distress, excellent for suicidal ideation, and fair for urgency. Callers had 5 times greater odds of a reduction in distress (AOR=5.03, 95% CI=3.98, 6.49), almost 5 times greater odds of a reduction in suicidal ideation (AOR=4.92, 95% CI=3.49, 6.94), and 11 times greater odds of a reduction in suicidal urgency (AOR=11.01, 95% CI=2.72, 44.50) at the end of calls than at the beginning. Veterans Crisis Line callers who provide identifying information experience reductions in distress and suicidal ideation during the call. Research is needed to examine the reduction in suicidal urgency because of fair reliability, generalizability of results to other callers, post-call treatment contact and engagement, and risk for suicide attempts and death.
ISSN:0749-3797
1873-2607
DOI:10.1016/j.amepre.2021.11.013