The night after the election, November 9, made a huge impact on the Suicide Prevention Hotlines, as they received tons of calls like never before. John Draper, the director of this organization, said that the calls skyrocketed between 1 and 2 in the morning that it reached up to 660 calls during those hours alone.
In an article published by CNN, calls were already high that night, but it even went higher after the election was over and results started to come out. Draper said that he had not seen anything like this before in his 25 years of working in the Suicide Prevention and Crisis Intervention department, especially when it is linked to an election. It has been a while since he has seen calls go up like this. He remembered the calls went high like this was during the 9/11 attack in New York. But even then, he said that it is still nothing compared to this post-election event.
Back in 2012 when Robin Williams committed suicide due to depression, calls also went up, and that was the last time the national hotline experienced such surge in their phone calls. The hotline was established since 2005, and it has helped a lot of people since then who are undergoing such terrible times in their lives.
The New Indian Express also reported this shocking turnout on events when the national hotline for suicide prevention received a lot of calls in crazy amount. Dr. Bindu Shanmugham, a psychiatrist at the Veteran Administration Healthcare System in California, explained that most people who called directly express their fears and frustrations on the recent election. Apparently, there are a lot of those who were left disappointed after Donald Trump won the office.
Do you think there is something that citizens should be worried about now that Trump is the U.S. president? What are your thoughts on this?
