Samaritans NYC - volunteer on suicide hotline - Suicide Hotline Volunteer Samaritans Employee Review

Have a lot of chance accumulate experience with mental illness population

It's volunteer, so no payment.

Feel like you are helping someone sometimes

The training is straight-up abusive, with everyone being told that they are wrong all the time and then the instructor will correct them but her correction is not any different from what they said. Instead of sharing examples for how to effectively ask questions, they constantly criticize volunteers for framing questions slightly incorrectly. The attendance policy is discriminatory. I missed the last training session because I had the flu with a fever over 101 and a doctor's note from urgent care, they didn't care and kicked me out of the entire program. Volunteers are required to tolerate sex calls for several minutes before they are allowed to hang up. Repeat abusers will hang up when males pick up the phone, call back until they get a young female volunteer and proceed at them for free 100% confidentially. This also blocks the lines for legitimate callers who may need someone to talk to about their mental health. The entire system is incredibly archaic, with everything still being handled with paper, no data analysis, and no way to effectively block repeat abusive callers with technology even though this technology clearly exists today. They are not interested in protecting their volunteers because they know they can just recruit new ones. Volunteers are required to cover a 9-hour night shift every month with no exceptions. Cell phones not allowed for the entirety of your shift regardless of whether you are on the phone or not.