Mental Health 'Warm Line' Helps Prevent Crises With Good Listening

Editor's note: a warm line is a place where people struggling with mental illness, but not in an acute state of crisis, can call and talk to a trained counselor as long as they need to. As part our community health series Vital Signs, we caught up with Daisy Matthias, a counselor at San Francisco’s new warm line, in between phone calls.

By Daisy Matthias

The majority of the people call about anxiety, depression, loneliness, or even stress.

We’ll be there for as long as you need us. We don’t have a time limit. And other warm lines sometimes will have a time limit of 20 minutes, 30 minutes.

Every counselor has a history of dealing with mental health.

In my case, there was a moment I was very stressed out at my last job. I really just couldn't take it anymore. I was depressed, and since I worked overnight I had no one to call. I called a crisis line and I said, “I just want someone to talk to.” But they couldn't help me cause I wasn't going to commit suicide.

So when I heard about the warm line and applied for it, I was like, “Oh thank god -- there’s something like that here.”

Every since I was a little girl, I've been living with depression and anxiety. I did do my best to find ways to cope with it, but I always felt like I was different.

I grew up in the United States -- with American values in a very traditional Mexican home. So there was a lot of conflict especially when it came to gender roles.

Even though I was a student at UC Berkeley, none of my accomplishments mattered because I was bisexual. That little fact seemed to block everything else I've done -- and that led to my anxiety and depression.

The reasons why we have callers is that people just want to vent, and they just want to talk.

In the medical community, sometimes ... they don’t listen to us, they don’t want to talk to us. They just want to solve the problem.

Here in the warm line, I love it because we can talk to people. They don’t have to be in an extreme crisis.

Sometimes people are stressed out; they need someone to talk to. They just want to hear a voice, just to hear, "It's going to be ok."

Jeremy Raff reported this story. Email him: jraff@kqed.org

Reach a Mental Health Triage Warm Line counselor at (855) 845-7415; or chat with counselor