New Policy: "Always Ask"

The Crisis Text Line looked at our corpus of over 75 million messages exchanged and learned: asking about suicide is neither harmful nor suggestive. In other words, when we ask a texter “Are you thinking about killing yourself?” we don’t see an increase in disengagement or a change to texter satisfaction ratings--and, most importantly, we were able to better detect suicidal ideation.

We’re now encouraging Crisis Counselors to assess for risk of suicide in every conversation. We call this policy Always Ask.

• Make texters feel seen and cared for. All texters will know that we have their safety at heart.
• Keep texters safe. When someone may be suicidal, the most dangerous thing we can do is not ask.
• Bring our Crisis Counselors peace of mind. Moving forward, Crisis Counselors will never have to wonder whether they should have risk-assessed.
• No downside. Our data shows it is not suggestive or harmful to ask.

We also beta tested over the last couple of months with a small group of Crisis Counselors. And, we learned some things about the best way to Always Ask.

• Method: use an expression of care followed by a direct question. For example: “With all this [insert issue here] going on, I just want to check in about your safety. Have you had any thoughts about ending your life?”
• Timing: Between the 3rd and 20th messages exchanged. (That is, after we build rapport.)

We’re excited to roll out Always Ask. Thank you for being on this journey with us. We’re committed to looking at the data to learn and innovate, finding new and improved ways to keep people safe