One recent night, the Bristol Crisis Center received five calls in five hours starting at 1 a.m. All were suicide related, and all represented a new constant at the center.
“We were getting about 16 calls in a month – and now we’re getting that in about a week,” the center’s executive director, Melissa Roberts, said Thursday.
Laura Weaver, the center’s volunteer coordinator and community educator, said that over the past six months – as the nation’s economy took a turn for the worst – the calls to the center have spiked and the reasons behind those calls have been consistent.
“They say I’ve lost my job or I can’t provide for my family,” Weaver said.
The center also is receiving more domestic-violence calls.
“Violence revolves around power and control,” Weaver said. “And when these are taken from someone in the form of being laid off and they don’t feel powerful, or [that] they can control a situation, then they may turn to controlling the people around them.”
The Crisis Center isn’t alone. According to the National Domestic Violence Hotline, calls have shot up across the nation. The Hotline reports that 21 percent more calls were placed in September than in the same month in the previous year nationwide. And when the stock market plunged in October, there were 18 percent more calls than in October 2007.
Single parent Jennifer Stout can relate. She and her two sons recently lost their home and are staying with her mother. The divorcée is working at the Salvation Army to help make ends meet.
“The way the world is right now with the economy and everything, sometimes you feel like it would be easier to give up than to stay on your two feet,” Stout said while stocking the pantry at the Salvation Army on Martin Luther King Boulevard.
Though she’s never called the crisis center, Stout said she is glad the 24 hour hot line is available.
“It’s just knowing that there’s somebody there to listen to what you’ve got to say, get it out, and keep you from doing something crazy,” she said.
The economy has hit the nonprofit Bristol Crisis Center pretty hard, forcing it to cut staff from 10 to only four. Additionally, volunteers and donations have decreased.
“People just aren’t donating and volunteering like they used to because they’re seeing difficult times and just trying to put food on the table,” Roberts said.
Despite the setbacks, the center continues to lend an ear. Staff sometimes work extended hours to ensure that someone is always there when the phone rings.
“We refuse to close early. We’re not going to turn the hot line off just because we don’t have volunteers,” Weaver said.
Staff members said they don’t mind extra shifts, if it means helping people on the other end of the line.
“Sometimes people call and sometimes they don’t and the important part is that we are here for them when they do choose to call,” Weaver said.
For help or to volunteer contact the Bristol Crisis Center at (276) 466-2218.
Kelly Cales is a multimedia fellow who can be reached at: kcales@wjhl.com
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