More young people seek emergency care
The Church’s SOS and Mental Health department has received 320,000 requests from young people who sought help while in crisis last year. There are 20,000 more inquiries than the year before.
“We have extended the working hours for online chat especially on weekends. It is clear that increased accessibility leads to increased numbers of inquiries,” says Secretary General Leif Jarle Theis in the Church’s SOS to the newspaper Dagen.
The Church’s SOS is the country’s largest emergency service on the phone and on the Internet, and you may call or chat for assistance. Half of the inquiries they receive on chat are thoughts of suicide, according to the Secretary-General.
“We feel that we are allowed to talk about this. The openness we invite leads to lives being saved every year,” says Theis.
He says that they have many experienced and well-educated volunteers who are trained in dealing with such conversations about life and death.
Those who chat are anonymous, but from those who indicate age and gender, the numbers show that there are mostly younger people who use this service and that more than 80 per cent of them are females.
© NTB Scanpix / #Norway Today
