Mental health profile of callers to a telephone counselling service

Abstract

We studied the mental health profile of callers to a generalist helpline. A survey was conducted in a large telephone counselling centre over a four-week period in 2006. Telephone counsellors administered the survey at the completion of a user's call. The centre answered a total of 1404 calls in the study period. Of these, 439 calls met the inclusion criteria and 270 callers agreed to participate. The survey collected data from callers on demographic variables, anxiety, depression, panic and social phobia, alcohol use, frequency of help seeking from the service, sources of professional help, attitudes to help services and access to the Internet. Callers experienced high levels of anxiety and depression. More frequent callers were older, with very frequent callers more likely to be never married. More frequent callers were more likely to report concerns with loneliness, physical illness and anxiety. There was a significant difference on the Goldberg Anxiety Scale (P < 0.05), with more frequent callers having higher anxiety scores. However, there was no significant difference on the Goldberg depression scores as a function of call frequency (P > 0.05). Panic attacks were more common among more frequent callers. These results will be useful in developing new telephone-administered anxiety and depression treatment programmes.