The fast-approaching holiday season will certainly prove stressful to all with final exams, present buying, and family vacations on the horizon. Luckily, Crisis Intervention of Houston is here to help with not only holiday stresses, but any and every situation you feel like you can’t face on your own.
Crisis Intervention of Houston is a nonprofit organization with the “sole mission to help people in crisis”. Highly-trained crisis counselors man free, confidential, and completely anonymous hotlines including the main Crisis Hotlines, Spanish Hotlines, and Teen Line 24 hours a day, seven days a week, every day of the year since their modest beginnings in December of 1970. Today, the hotlines answer nearly 250 crisis related phone calls every day, as well as offering text and instant messaging counseling to Houston teens.
According to their website, crisishotline.org, their goal is “to help people who don’t know where to go for help and to overcome the barriers to help such as fear, isolation, abuse, physical disability, health, language, age, income, location, problem type or timing of the crisis”. In addition to the hotlines, CIH provides Crisis Response Teams which respond to a crisis on-site, such as a tragedy in a school or workplace, Survivors of Suicide support group which offers support to grieving families, and Community Education programs where information on crisis prevention and intervention is presented to community groups such as schools, churches, and mental health professionals.
While teens can call the Crisis Hotline, they have the option of the Teen Line which allows fellow teenagers to answer calls. The teen counselors receive the same training the adults do, and are fully prepared to help their peers with any crisis they may face, with the understanding that adults can sometimes fail to provide. The Teen Text and Teen Link (chat room) options are also heavily used and answered by teenaged counselors.
Volunteering for CIH provides the ability to reach out to others in crisis and proves exceptionally rewarding, as every time a volunteer takes a call, they have the opportunity to simply help someone in need. Whether it’s lending a helping hand through providing resources, advice, and referrals, talking someone down from the ledge, or simply providing a listening ear to someone that needs one, volunteers can leave the hotline every day knowing they made a difference in someone’s life.
Many choose to volunteer for personal reasons, for the pure gratification volunteering provides, and some to complete internships or gain experience needed for the mental health, social work, or psychology fields. Volunteering with CIH also improves communication and mediating skills, as well as providing a means to become more familiar with the resources provided in the Houston area such as hospitals, soup kitchens, shelters, and support groups.
To volunteer, simply download and submit an application at crisishotline.org or crisishotline.org/volunteer_application.html. To volunteer for the Teen line, you must be between the ages of 15 and 19 and, after your application is reviewed and a phone interview is conducted, must complete 32 hours of training and two online courses. While the training may seem hefty, it is incredibly interesting and involved, and provides tools for volunteers to incorporate into their everyday life as well as on the phones of the hotline.
Crisis Intervention of Houston not only provides help to those in need, it offers an incredible volunteer experience. For those that need community service hours, are interested in the fields crisis counseling addresses, or simply love to help others, CIH may be the organization for you. For those that are feeling the stresses of the holiday season, remember that Crisis Hotline is there to help.
