30seconds with Norma Rutledge

Anytime someone in this community faces despair or crisis, there’s a patient, trained volunteer posted by a telephone waiting to answer their call for help.

Norma Rutledge is executive director of the Baton Rouge Crisis Intervention Center, which provides an invaluable service called The Phone.

Among other things, The Phone is our community’s suicide hotline on which trained crisis counselors field calls 24-7. The service (924-3900) is anonymous and free to anyone who needs help.

We wondered if financial problems and related anxieties are starting to show up in the calls The Phone receives, so we asked Rutledge all about the service and what her volunteers are hearing.

How does The Phone work exactly?

We are one of two certified crisis centers in Louisiana, and we take mental health calls in the Capital Region, southwest Louisiana to Texas, as well as the Acadiana area down to the Gulf.

We also have contracts with United Way’s 211, the Department of Social Services’ Louisiana Spirit line (post-Katrina and Rita crisis counseling) and LifeLine, the national suicide prevention line, among others.

How many calls usually come in?

When I give you a comparison of 2008 and ’07 you’ll have a stroke, but the point is we had a hurricane, which escalated call volume—and the publicity of 211 has helped to bring in other calls. We got 30,000 calls in 2007, which is really about average. In 2008, we received 124,000 calls.

What kind of problems are people calling about?

There are so many different scenarios when months may be difficult for a lot of our population.

Perhaps it’s a really family-oriented person who never used social services because they’re in a community where family and friends made that unnecessary, then suddenly the community is experiencing its own economic problems. It may put that person in need to access social services.

That can be extremely distressing to someone.

The elderly have been cared for pretty much, but perhaps their life savings just got hit, so they find themselves in a place where they must reach out and they don’t know how and their dignity is at stake. That’s true if you’re 32 or 72.

Or some walk around with the fear of being laid off, or walk around with survivor guilt of still having a job when all your friends are laid off.

How do you handle a caller in crisis?

You’re trying to de-escalate their crisis. Most of these people can solve their own problems, but they just need help sorting it out and recognizing what their options are. We’re not therapists, but we try to help calm them down so they’re not in this paralytic state of panic, hopelessness and vulnerability.

What about call volume now with the looming national recession?

Let’s look at the calls from Dec. 7, 2008, to Feb. 7, 2009, and compare them to those dates in 2007—because we’re far enough removed from Hurricane Gustav. Our volume is about 700 more calls this two-month period.

How many calls are directly related to financial issues?

Comparing fourth quarters in 2007 and 2008, we had a 23% increase in crisis calls with financial concerns as their reason for calling. We had a 300% increase in calls with depression and anxiety being the primary reason for calling.

In suicidal content—either suicidal thoughts, people threatening suicide, suicide attempts or third parties calling concerned for someone who may be suicidal—we had a 38% increase.

How many volunteers man The Phone lines?

We have between 70 and 80 volunteers, some who also do paid shifts. Plus we have designated phone counselors who supervise, and a paid staff of six.

What’s your annual budget, and where does the money come from?

Our annual budget is $1.2 million on bare bones to operate—and I do mean bare bones, with no fluff at all. If a computer breaks, we’re down a computer.

What we need and what we have are two different things. We get money from state contracts as well as allocations from United Way, Baton Rouge Area Foundation, and LSU, which continues to support The Phone as students pay a $2 activity fee each semester.

What’s your best advice for people during hard financial times?

I really want to ask people in this difficult time to pay very close attention to their friends, their family, their professional colleagues and those they come in contact with regularly. Depression and feelings of hopelessness and helplessness are often visual to us if we stop and look and not blow it off.

Sometimes even those with tremendous coping skills, who have dealt with stress beautifully, somehow come to the point where they can’t cope. Know your resources—and we’re one. You can reach The Phone crisis line at (225) 924-3900.