[URBAN NOTE] "TTC renews agreement with Distress Centres to help prevent suicide"

[rfmcdonald]

In 2012, I took a picture at the track level of Eglinton station is one of the signs for the TTC's new trackside suicide prevention program. The sign points people who feel themselves at particular risk--i.e. potential jumpers--to the Crisis Link distress line accessible via an emergency phone, located in the case of Eglinton at the north end of the platform.



The Toronto Transit blog's Robert Mackenzie reports that, happily, the TTC is renewing its innovative project with Crisis Link.

Tuesday, June 18, the TTC and the Distress Centres of Toronto renewed and extended an agreement that continues the Crisis Link suicide prevention program through to July 31, 2018. Crisis Link began as a pilot program in June 2011.

Mary Deacon, Chair of Bell Canada’s Let’s Talk mental health initiative joined the chair of the Toronto Transit Commission, Karen Stintz, the TTC’s chief executive officer, Andy Byford and Distress Centres executive director Karen Letofsky to sign the agreement at the TTC’s head office. Bell has generously provided the pay-phones on each subway platform that immediately connect someone in distress who is thinking about suicide with a Distress Centre counselor. Crisis Link phone calls are free.

When a TTC passenger calls Crisis Link from a payphone near the designated waiting area on every subway platform in the system, a counselor with the Distress Centres knows exactly where on the TTC the call is coming from. The counselor then determines whether the caller is in danger of harming themselves. If they are, the Distress Centres notifies the TTC’s transit control centre where staff can slow subway trains entering that station and then dispatch help for the caller.

Since the TTC introduced Crisis Link in 2011, the Distress Centres have received 218 calls from individuals in distress. Of those, counsellors determined that 12 per cent of the callers had suicidal thoughts that required action by the TTC and police. Another 18 per cent of callers expressed suicidal ideas but the councillors did not deem them to be threatening to harming themselves. The Distress Centres have handled an average of 2.75 incidents each month of people contemplating suicide on the TTC. No person has ever attempted suicide on the TTC immediately after speaking with a Crisis Link counselor.

In 2010, the year before the TTC and the Distress Centres set up Crisis Link, 29 suicide incidents occurred on the TTC. In 2011, the year they introduced Crisis Link, 16 suicide incidents occurred. In 2012, 19 suicide incidents occurred and to date in 2013, there have nine suicide incidents have occurred on the TTC.

[. . .]

The TTC says that “As an employer and provider of a public service in Toronto… [it] takes suicide prevention very seriously. It has worked with, and will continue to work with, health-care professionals to help end the stigma resulting from seeking help for mental health issues. A case in point: the TTC purposely uses the word ‘suicide’ in all of its published material — including posters in the subway system — to make sure everyone knows that help is just a phone call away.