100,000 Crisis Calls Answered by Lifeline Ukraine in 5 Years

As it marked its 5th anniversary this week, suicide prevention hotline Lifeline Ukraine also met another major milestone: it answered its 100,000 call from Ukrainians seeking support in their moments of personal crisis.

Lifeline Ukraine was spearheaded and founded in 2019 by Paul Niland, a Kyiv-based writer and businessman, following support for the concept by then Acting Minister for Health Ulana Suprun. The model of Lifeline Australia, which emphasizes non-judgment and confidentiality, was used as a basis for the Ukrainian effort.

Reflecting with Kyiv Post on the last five years, Niland estimated that, as a result of the support offered by Lifeline Ukraine’s telephone and chat crisis supporters, some 15,000 Ukrainian lives have been saved and another 20,000 people averted escalation to suicidality.

“It was shocking to me that, prior to 2019, Ukraine had no national suicide prevention hotline,” Niland said. “It has been an honor for us, and that very much includes the team of psychological professionals at Lifeline Ukraine, to fill that gap and provide this essential service. I can’t imagine the impact if the service had not been available.”

Over the course of Lifeline Ukraine’s existence, Niland and his colleagues have seen social and political changes that have impacted on Ukrainians’ emotional and psychological well-being and have accordingly responded.

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In late 2013, Ukrainians took to the streets of Kyiv to demand democracy, justice, and closer ties with Europe.

“As the full-scale war has progressed, the types of challenges and crises that Ukrainians are facing has shifted,” Niland said. “At one point, we were supporting many people who were displaced by the war which is a population of some 7 million people inside Ukraine. Then, the needs of survivors of sexual assault by Russian occupiers became evident, as did those of people held in Russian captivity.”

“It’s been a case of tracking trauma as it emerges and responding to it for those impacted,” he said, adding that calls had increased from 1,000 per month pre-full-scale to around 6,500 per month during the full-scale war.

The service has also evolved toward best practice in crisis support. This includes:

• a partnership with Google that sees Lifeline Ukraine’s tiles pop-up and prioritized when searches for suicide are detected;
• establishment of the capacity to refer callers to follow-up services on a national basis;
• introduction of chat for those who feel more comfortable texting rather than talking;
• development of learning materials where people and organizations can get suicide prevention skills online, and;
• training of organizations in “mental health first aid’ and suicide prevention, including of newsroom journalists.

Niland, a man with a life-saving mission, spoke to Kyiv Post about Lifeline Ukraine’s future.

“It’s great that mental health has been de-stigmatized in Ukraine following Olena Zelenska’s leadership and we have to build on that by growing more awareness that support is always available to people in crisis via Lifeline Ukraine. People need to know that it’s ‘normal’ to sometimes feel very poorly and that help is always at hand,” Niland said.

He is also determined to “close the gap” between demand for Lifeline Ukraine’s services and its capacity to provide them.

“At present, we are answering some 4000 calls from help seekers per month, but we get some 6500 people ringing us per month. Meeting everyone’s needs on a 24/7/365 per year basis is a matter of resources so we are very focussed on achieving that goal,” Niland said. “In very practical terms, for about $2,000 extra per month, we can afford the staff to pick up those additional calls, especially during the very busy 6 p.m. to midnight period.”

Currently backed in the largest part by a grant from Global Giving, an international charitable platform, Niland hopes to establish a foundation through which Lifeline Ukraine can become financially sustainable in the long term.

Looking at the broader context and beyond Lifeline Ukraine’s immediate mission, Niland believes a key systemic improvement is needed to save more Ukrainian lives.

“In Ukraine, there’s absolutely a shortfall of trained mental health professionals, and we lag behind other European countries in that regard on a per capita basis,” he said. “It’s vital that more people are trained as psychiatrists, psychologists and mental health nurses in order to better support the country’s resilience, especially in the face of the war.”