Par Madison Park - le 24/06/2016 http://sante.lefigaro.fr*
Un service d'assistance par messages écrits permet aux adolescents et aux personnes en difficulté d'être soutenus de façon anonyme et confidentielle.
Article de USA Today (États-Unis)
Un corps d'assistants sociaux formés, disponibles 24 heures sur 24, 7 jours sur 7, pour venir en aide par texto aux personnes qui en ont besoin, de façon anonyme et confidentielle: l'idée semble toute simple mais elle a fait recette outre-Atlantique. «Crisis Text Line ne remplace pas les soins mentaux, mais lorsqu'on se sent complètement submergé, perdu et seul, c'est un point de contact et un moyen de retrouver un état d'esprit plus stable», explique Rayne, conseillère.
Nancy Lublin, la fondatrice de ce service, en a eu l'idée après avoir travaillé avec des adolescents: certains d'entre eux préféraient communiquer par texto leurs angoisses face à des problèmes comme la dépression ou le viol. En 2013, l'équipe de DoSomething.org, le groupe de soutien pour adolescents qu'elle dirige comme PDG, s'est rendu compte de changements dans les habitudes technologiques et a commencé à prodiguer conseils et soutien dans les moments de crise par texto. La logique était simple: aller là où se trouvent les adolescents. D'après une étude du Pew Research Center, ces jeunes envoient et reçoivent en moyenne trente SMS par jour.
Un pic entre 19 heures et 21 heures
Depuis sa création, Crisis Text Line a échangé près de dix-sept millions de textos. Crédits photo :
Pourtant, aujourd'hui, les utilisateurs du service sont de tous âges. Environ 35 % des textos reçus émanent de personnes les sollicitant à propos d'enfants, de divorce ou de problèmes professionnels.
Depuis trente ans, le taux de suicides aux États-Unis n'a cessé d'augmenter. Plus de 41.000 personnes à travers les États-Unis ont mis fin à leurs jours en 2013. Bien que les lignes de détresse téléphoniques, en service depuis des décennies, restent efficaces, à l'ère de Snapchat et de WhatsApp les conversations téléphoniques sont pour certains plus gênantes ou inconfortables.
En trois ans, Crisis Text Line a échangé près de dix-sept millions de textos. Grâce au volume de conversations recueillies, l'association dispose de précieuses données. Elle rend même publiques certaines d'entre elles sur les «Crisis Trends», ou tendances de crise (les pensées suicidaires, l'automutilation ou le harcèlement), habituellement très difficiles à quantifier. On y apprend par exemple que les pensées suicidaires se manifestent le plus entre 19 heures et 21 heures, et que les victimes de dépression ou de violences semblent plus nombreuses le mardi…
Nancy Lublin ne soupçonnait pas que son initiative aurait un tel impact. «La plus grande surprise a été l'afflux de personnes frappées de surdité vers notre service ; pas seulement celles qui cherchent de l'aide, mais aussi celles qui veulent servir de conseillers», dit-elle.
Rayne peut témoigner à quel point une personne sourde peut se sentir tenue à l'écart des méthodes de soutien traditionnelles. Il y a quelques années, elle a été hospitalisée à la suite d'une tentative de suicide. «Parce que je suis une personne sourde, trouver de l'aide avant d'en arriver à être hospitalisée n'était pas facile puisque je ne pouvais appeler aucune des lignes de soutien téléphoniques», écrit-elle. Tout comme elle, trente conseillers sourds ou malentendants ont aujourd'hui rejoint l'organisation.
*http://sante.lefigaro.fr/actualite/2016/06/24/25123-sos-textos-secours-ados
***
sur le meme sujet article en anglais " The First and Only National Text Message Crisis Line 26/05/2016 09:54 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/oliver-leung/the-first-and-only-nation_b_10118392.html
Oliver Leung
We all experience moments of crisis. When we are vulnerable, it’s easy to slip into helplessness. We begin to doubt and drown in despair. For some, social circles help us through. For others, it’s not immediately apparent.
In desperate times, verbally articulating our feelings can difficult. Our voice can expose our innermost thoughts to prying ears. On the other hand, texting has become an extension of our thoughts and evolved to help us through our darkest hour.
They say it’s what you make, I say it’s up to fate.
It’s woven in my soul, I need to let you go.
Your eyes, they shine so bright, I want to save their light.
I can’t escape this now unless you show me how...
— Imagine Dragons “Demons“
Since it’s inception in 2013, Crisis Text Line has exchanged nearly 18 million text messages with people in crisis. The nonprofit leverages the privacy of text messaging, which has helped those struggling with addiction, suicidal thoughts, eating disorders, sexual abuse, and other crises.
Crisis Text Line conducts its conversations exclusively by text messages, enabling people in crisis situations to text a phone number (741741) and immediately connect with a counselor who is trained to help. The nonprofit exchanges over 1.5 million messages per month and leverages Twilio Programmable SMS to power these conversations. The partnership was announced earlier this week at SIGNAL, the developer conference for communications in San Francisco.
Twilio.org was launched in the same year as Crisis Text Line to equip nonprofits with communications to advance their missions, and currently partners with over 700 nonprofits. In 2015, Twilio committed 1% of the company’s equity to fund Twilio.org over the next decade.
“At Twilio.org, we believe communication empowers people,” said Erin Reilly, Executive Director of Twilio.org. “Crisis Text Line is creating conversations that give people hope, and I’m pleased that Twilio can help extend its reach and provide reliability when it matters most.”
“There is a sense of urgency that comes with every crisis,” said Nancy Lublin, CEO, and Founder of Crisis Text Line. “When time is limited and emotions are high, text messaging provides those in crisis a safe and private medium to reach out for help. With Twilio, we can easily extend our services, grow our platform and continue to provide hope to even more people.”
According to Lublin, 30% of conversations relate to depression and suicide. While 18% is on anxiety. Furthermore, nearly 3 of 4 users are between the ages of 18 and 25. For many bullies, texting is a weapon to harm. Now it has become a tool to heal.
Their data website, Crisistrends.org, is the nation’s largest catalog of crisis data. This anonymized dataset has been made available for thought leaders and policy makers to understand the crises Americans face and can work together to prevent future crises from happening.
I was also fortunate to meet Ellen Kaster, a counselor at Crisis Text Line. She shared how the death of a cousin and the inspiration of a friend motivated her to help others through a crisis. Although counselors may not have the same life experiences as the individual in crisis, Ellen identifies that pain is pain. The objectives are to empower individuals to come up with personalized solutions and to turn hot moments into cold moments.
If you are experiencing a crisis, you’re not alone.
Text START to 741-741 and connect with a counselor. It’s free to use and available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
***
Un autre article datant d'un an qui précise le fonctionnement
Crisis Text Line: Big data helping solve big problems
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/columnists/ct-harris-crisis-text-line-0628-biz-20150626-column.html
Melissa Harris 26/06/2015
Nancy Lublin is the CEO of the New York City-based youth empowerment group DoSomething.org. (DoSomething.org)
Crisis counseling and big data helping at-risk youth solve life's big challenges.
The text message to a DoSomething.org staffer read: "He won't stop raping me. He told me not to tell anyone."
Those words quickly made their way to Nancy Lublin, the CEO of the New York City-based youth empowerment group, which runs do-good campaigns by text, like initiatives for gender-neutral bathrooms and sharing tips to prevent texting while driving.
Lublin's staff had received a few messages — concerns about bullying and the like — unrelated to their campaigns, but "that one message stopped me in my tracks," Lublin said. "It was like being punched in the stomach. The first rule of marketing and sales is: Go where demand is. People want this by text. We should be supplying crisis counseling by text."
That week, Lublin started building Crisis Text Line, a national 24/7 text number — 741741 — available to everyone but mostly used by teens. It went live two years later in 2013 in Chicago and El Paso, Texas. Chicago was chosen because of the influence of an early funder, the Chicago-based MacArthur Foundation. El Paso was a data-driven decision based on its large Latino population.
The median teen texter sends 60 text messages a day. For whites, it's 50 per day; blacks, 80 per day; and Latinos, 100 per day. If you're an older girl, age 14-17, the median is 100 texts a day. These figures are likely low compared to current habits as they're based on a 2011 Pew Research Center survey.
The data on Latinos help explain why text line usage in El Paso exceeded Chicago's by three times, Lublin said.
Within four months, the line had been contacted by cellphones from every area code in America. The organization is expected to surpass 7 million messages by July, and Lublin is now in need of more counselors.
(Tribune Graphics)
If a texter is in immediate danger, a supervisor, who is a licensed social worker or mental health professional, is involved and police are called. The line handles an average of 2.5 "active rescues" per day. Yes, they have liability insurance.
Algorithms and other software help counselors more quickly identify the root problem and get teens connected with local resources. Given that the line tracks every word exchanged, Lublin is sitting on a growing trove of mental health data accessible at crisistrends.org, which is becoming robust enough that Lublin hopes it will soon be used to influence how schools, hospitals and law enforcement allocate resources.
LGBT issues, for instance, peak on Sundays and Mondays, perhaps due to church and the start of the school week, then taper to a Friday low. Says Lublin: "Fridays are the best days to be gay in America!"
Texts about suicide are most prevalent in rural states like Alaska and Montana.
Eating disorder issues peak on Sundays. Lublin: "It sure looks like a family problem, not a school problem."
Volume decreases overall during holidays but rises in the spring. "Prom season, testing season, college-acceptance season," Lublin said.
Then there are some patterns even Lublin and Bob Filbin, the line's chief data scientist, can't explain: Chicago experiences peak text volume on Wednesdays. And texts regarding substance abuse peak nationwide — more like skyrocket — at 5 a.m.
"This one is the weirdest," Lublin said. "A massive spike at 5 a.m. I have no idea why. Is that when a high wears off? We see our role as providing data. But researchers should go nuts with these charts. What should it mean for Chicago schools to know Wednesday is a tough day?"
The next step is prediction, tools the line is testing.
For instance, the line now knows texters who use the words "sex," "oral" and "Mormon" are likely experiencing issues with their sexuality, and the software automatically will pull up appropriate resources in the texters' area code on the counselor's computer.
Filbin also is working on a tool that will, based on historical data, help counselors identify the root issue quicker. The software, for instance, would be able to decipher that a texter who initially reports having trouble with his or her homework might really be grappling with suicidal thoughts, Filbin said.
"Texting is shown to be in the research, the most honest form of digital communication," Filbin said. "It feels more private. You can be more discreet, say, in a school bathroom stall. ... And we're moving to that point where we have enough data, if not the largest corpus, on people in crisis in the country, and that's only going to grow, to be able to identify patterns that aren't visible to the naked eye."
Counselors use a lot of therapeutic techniques, like asking open-ended questions, but it's not a therapy session, Lublin emphasizes. Frequent texters are put on action plans. Whereas 3 percent of texters were once taking up 34 percent of conversation minutes, that has been reduced to 8 percent.
"(We're) not trying to be therapy for people or be their best friend," said Lublin, who will leave DoSomething later this year to focus full time on the text line. "We're trying to get them to a cooler moment and in a place where they can help themselves."
So they ask just one follow-up question of their texters after the conversation has ended: "Are you feeling better?"
That's the most important data point of all.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/columnists/ct-harris-crisis-text-line-0628-biz-20150626-column.html