Every day, new patterns emerge in what it means to provide effective crisis counseling by text. For example, we’ve found that volunteer Crisis Counselors who genuinely identify texter strengths (e.g., “you showed courage texting us.”) achieve higher satisfaction ratings from texters. Our data show that the three most effective terms to use are brave, smart, and proud. (E.g., “That was brave of you to reach out to a friend.”) And in 2018, the word “impressive” surged as an effective word too.

Most crisis lines respond to texters in the order in which they arrive. We act more like a hospital emergency room. We call it texter triage. An algorithm runs in the background and assesses a texter’s suicidal risk based on their first few messages. Texters at high risk get marked as “code orange” and move to #1 in the queue. During the 2019 Presidential Election, when we saw conversations at 8x our normal levels, we were still able to reach high-risk texters in an average of 39 seconds. Shorter wait times mean lives saved. Read more about our innovative, ethical approach to queuing on our blog.

After every conversation, we ask texters if they want to share a message with their Crisis Counselor. These messages often confirm the impact the Crisis Counselor has had on a texter’s life. Here’s an example: “Kindness is magic and you’re a magician.”

For crisis hotlines, demand has been unpredictable. For example, when Robin Williams died by suicide, many hotlines experienced a 2-4x increase in volume. For most hotlines, this can lead to long wait times for people in crisis that can stretch on for hours or even days. For people at risk of harming themselves or someone else, every minute matters. That’s why Crisis Text Line developed an algorithm that uses an ensemble of data sources to predict volume spikes, allowing us to spot spikes 6-8x faster than we could with people alone. This early warning means we can staff volunteer Crisis Counselors sooner. During the 5 spikes we saw in 2019, we’ve served 93% of high-risk texters in under 5 minutes.

Available to the public, this de-identified, aggregated data dashboard updates automatically and shows insights like, the state that experiences the most anxiety. Or answer questions like what day do people in the LGBTQ+ community reach out with the least crises? Our data showed that crisis outreach is lowest on Fridays. There is an LGBTQ+ organization that we spoke to which only offers texting services on Fridays and we recommended they switch their hours to Mondays. Check out the Crisis Trends data report!

We work with partners ranging from non-profits to states. They use our service to support people in crisis in their communities, and we share aggregated, de-identified and anonymized dashboards back about the crises their communities are experiencing. (Interested in becoming a partner?)

We also have a robust Research Collaboration Program.

The goals of the program are:

• Access. To open the door for world-class researchers to work with one of the country’s most important sources of de-identified and anonymized data sets in order to improve our service.
• Dissemination. To create a consistent flow of innovative and insightful research and analytical content to share with community groups and policymakers in order to increase access to mental well-being support.
• Implementation. To create data science products that are implemented by Crisis Text Line and community groups, and improve the crisis intervention space as a whole.

Since 2013, more than a dozen papers have been published by our research collaborators. We’re proud to fuel this kind of learning! Here’s what has been published so far.

We wanted to share our insights with decision makers, journalists, and other researchers whose work can help make our texters’ lives better. So we started Crisis Text Line R&D, an internal think tank, where our in-house researchers study and collaborate with other research teams so that we can help more people in crisis. Research and evidence can only change lives if it is shared and told through stories — so we created this blog to share what we learn with you.