Campus hotline is InTouch with crisis
Pretty Rami
Issue date: 9/25/06 Section: Pulse
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Loneliness, depression, anxiety, loss and grief, sexual orientation, trauma, suicide, an encumbrance of psychological disorders: these are the realities of life, realities that UIC volunteers at the InTouch Crisis Hotline support people through daily.
According to InTouch's coordinator, "Our primary goal and mission is to provide ethical, empathic, sensitive, and competent services to those in the community."
Since all calls are anonymous, the hotline provides the comfort of anonymity in a society where a stigma associated with seeking mental help continues to exist. For some, the hotline may be the only help they receive. This holds especially true for callers unable to afford health insurance.
UIC's Hotline founder, adjunct professor and psychologist, Dr. Barry Greenwald, addressed the impact of InTouch on many of the hotline's callers: "In the world we live now, we may be the only entrée into the field of mental health services."
Greenwald's initial intention was to provide undergraduate students interested in clinical psychology the opportunity to receive training and practical application with the additional benefit of servicing the UIC community.
The success of InTouch was astonishing. The anticipated callers were students, professors and staff from UIC; however, many calls came from the surrounding community. Students that had been trained using a therapeutic approach mainly to deal with calls concerning recreational drug use due to their assumed population were quickly retrained, instead, for calls dealing with every life crisis imaginable.
InTouch first began as a 24-hour hotline with the reasoning that crisis does not respect time. This distinguished hotline helped people make it through the night, and the students became agents of referral to callers. In subsequent years, InTouch's hours of operation have been reduced due to difficulty in staffing.
The committed volunteers of the InTouch Crisis Hotline are all trained paraprofessional, UIC students. The hotline is open year-round, except for a brief period when it is closed for the winter holidays in late December, seven days a week from 6 p.m. to 10:30 p.m.
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According to InTouch's coordinator, "Our primary goal and mission is to provide ethical, empathic, sensitive, and competent services to those in the community."
Since all calls are anonymous, the hotline provides the comfort of anonymity in a society where a stigma associated with seeking mental help continues to exist. For some, the hotline may be the only help they receive. This holds especially true for callers unable to afford health insurance.
UIC's Hotline founder, adjunct professor and psychologist, Dr. Barry Greenwald, addressed the impact of InTouch on many of the hotline's callers: "In the world we live now, we may be the only entrée into the field of mental health services."
Greenwald's initial intention was to provide undergraduate students interested in clinical psychology the opportunity to receive training and practical application with the additional benefit of servicing the UIC community.
The success of InTouch was astonishing. The anticipated callers were students, professors and staff from UIC; however, many calls came from the surrounding community. Students that had been trained using a therapeutic approach mainly to deal with calls concerning recreational drug use due to their assumed population were quickly retrained, instead, for calls dealing with every life crisis imaginable.
InTouch first began as a 24-hour hotline with the reasoning that crisis does not respect time. This distinguished hotline helped people make it through the night, and the students became agents of referral to callers. In subsequent years, InTouch's hours of operation have been reduced due to difficulty in staffing.
The committed volunteers of the InTouch Crisis Hotline are all trained paraprofessional, UIC students. The hotline is open year-round, except for a brief period when it is closed for the winter holidays in late December, seven days a week from 6 p.m. to 10:30 p.m.
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