- Oct 17, 2011
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‘Suicide is only one option': Social Security staff newly assigned to phone duties raise concerns over training
Experts and SSA employees question wisdom of telling callers in crisis that suicide is an option.
SSA recently began shifting new swaths of its workforce to phone answering duty, including those who normally receive and process retirement and disability claims, manage the agency’s technology and work in the agency's finances unit. Those employees received brief, three-hour training before they began answering calls.As part of that training, they were warned some callers may express suicidal ideation and presented with examples using a theoretical employee named Fiona.
“It's important for Fiona to keep the caller engaged and to remind her that suicide is only one option,” the animated trainer told employees in the video, a copy of which was obtained by Government Executive, “and that there is no urgency to make any decisions.”
Caitlin Thompson, a clinical psychologist who spent eight years at the Veterans Affairs Department as a clinical care coordinator on the Veterans Crisis Line and later as the department’s national director of suicide prevention, said SSA's approach did not follow commonly accepted best practices.
“It’s not a normal thing to say,” Thompson said. “No. That’s not the thing you say to somebody who might be suicidal.”
Instead, SSA would be better suited telling employees to ask callers if they feel safe in the immediate term and if they say no, to tell the caller that they will work with their supervisor to get them in touch with a crisis line.
But think of the savings!
See also:
Long Waits, Waves of Calls, Web Crashes: Social Security is Breaking Down [ETA: call wait times no longer reported publicly]
WaPo MSN mirror The website has crashed 4 times in the last 10 days Customer service has plummeted, but the office to monitor customer service experience has been eliminated Acting head Dudek acknowledges that "phone service 'sucks'" and that DOGE is actually in control Before the cuts...
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