State College nonprofit Centre Helps plans to expand its 24/7 suicide and crisis counseling hotline services in its new headquarters, which it’s scheduled to move into in March.
Centre Helps is staffed by about 50 Penn State students, all of whom are volunteers.
“So the hotline room will be big enough to have four workstations and a little corner of comfy furniture, because sometimes there’s people in there training or supporting the callers. So it’ll be big enough to accommodate that. Our conference room will be large enough that we can do all of our training in that conference room," said Denise McCann, executive director of Centre Helps.
McCann says hotline volunteers go through at least 100 hours of training, and this new space will allow them to train more at once. Aidan Yanchick is a fourth-year student hotline volunteer. He describes the long process.
“It was a lot of going through different situations just based on counseling skills like motivational interviewing, things like that. And then there’s a weekend-long training which was focused more on suicide," Yanchick said. "So learning how to handle calls where someone may be at imminent risk and then we go on supervision for about five weeks for four hours each week.”
McCann said their new space will also focus on supporting volunteers. She said they’ll have a kitchen and a “destress room” where volunteers can relax and take care of their own mental health. Third-year volunteer Nathan Noel says taking care of his own mental health is important, especially after difficult calls.
“So I focus on myself. And I make sure I’m grounded. And I reflect on the call I just had. From there I do my best to try and remember everything and write everything down. But if anything sticks with me later on in the day, I always make sure I do something to sort of wind down,” Noel said.
Centre Helps is currently looking for new volunteer hotline counselors. The application can be found at centrehelps.org.