INSIGHT: How student Katie, 17, copes as 'baby' of the suicide line

IT'S the busiest time of the year for the The Samaritans.

The joy and happiness of Christmas and New Year celebrations means nothing to many people, who find only deepening despair.

Thousands of people have received guidance and a friendly ear over the last few weeks, many being talked back from the brink of suicide.

But what is life like at the other end of the telephone, for the volunteers themselves?

Reporter AMY BINNS spoke to one of them about how she learnt to be one of the listeners at the end of the line...

A-LEVEL student Katie Shephard likes partying, going out with her boyfriend and holidays abroad, but she's more than an average teenager.

For Katie spends three hours a week as a Samaritan talking to desperate and suicidal people and, at only 17, she's the baby of the Blackburn branch.

When Katie first walked into the Samaritans' office on New Park Road, Blackburn, to train as a volunteer, she soon found she had got more than she bargained for.

She began preparation classes in September with five other women and one man, discussing the kinds of problems callers might have and taking mock telephone calls from their teachers.

"I was a bit shy and nervous when I started anyway but when we started taking calls it was extremely nerve-racking with people watching," she said.

The teacher called from another room and the trainee answered on a phone with a loudspeaker so the group could hear both sides of the conversation.

Katie said: "We would all sit huddled over the phone trying not to let anyone else listen and no-one would volunteer to take a call until they really had to. Everybody at the beginning was very, very nervous of saying the wrong thing.

"Even though it's only a mock you are nervous about someone putting the phone down and taking tablets. You are always thinking 'How will this upset them?'. You are so careful about what not to say, you sometimes don't know what to say." Samaritans are taught always to ask callers if they feel suicidal and Katie still finds this difficult.

"It's horrendous trying to find the right place to ask that question and you have no idea what their answer is going to be," she said. "You teeter on the edge until they answer and if they say 'Yes I am and I've taken the tablets' you feel your stomach turn over.

"If you can make them talk about their feelings and put things into perspective you can turn them away from suicide and make them see that there is a future, that there's light at the end of the tunnel."

Samaritans never offer advice or tell people what to do and Katie found this the hardest thing to learn.

"If your friend comes to you with a problem, you say 'Do this and do that' but you have to unlearn that.

"You don't know the person at the end of the phone even if you feel you do, and you never know 100 per cent of the story.

"You have to let them sort their own problems out, maybe suggest things to help them find their own solution but not try and find it for them."

Katie took her first real calls after two months of classes.

The first time the phone rang, the caller hung up without speaking, and the second call was a wrong number.

"I was getting more and more tense and het up and finally I got a real call," she said. "There's nothing like the feeling when they say 'thank you' and you know you have helped them."

Katie also loves the camaraderie among the volunteers and enjoys being looked after as the baby of the branch.

"I joined because when I have a problem I like having someone to talk to and I'm lucky enough to have friends and family around me but not everyone has that luxury," she said. "At first I thought I was just going to go through a few classes. I didn't realise until the last training session how close we had all got. I've made a wonderful group of friends and you feel so welcomed whenever you walk in."

Katie will soon be leaving Blackburn to study languages at Coventry University but intends to transfer to the nearest Samaritan branch there.

She will also be spending a year in Italy and Spain and hopes to visit overseas branches - known as Befrienders International - while she's there.

"My language skills should be adequate by then to take calls but I would just like to visit and see them," she said.

"It's something I don't want to give up now I've got there and when I come home I would like to come back to the Blackburn branch."

Personal qualities are more important than age or life experience for Samaritan work, says Joyce Flitcroft, director of the Blackburn, Hyndburn and Ribble Valley branch,

"You can't be experienced in everything no matter how old you are so I don't think it does make a difference," she said.

"I'm not saying it's not important but the qualities of a listener are more important and you can't train someone to listen, the quality must be there to start with."

She said Samaritans aim to listen in a caring way without judging and without talking about their own experiences.

"You are then talking about yourself and you are not listening to what they are telling you," she said.

"We don't give advice but we share the problem with them and explore their options.

"It can be difficult to see a way out for some people, but it does help to talk even it's for a few minutes. It does release the things that they have been holding in."

Joyce said Samaritan recruits could come from all walks of life but they must be able to give three hours a week and do one overnight shift a month, unless there are special circumstances.

People interested in Samaritan work can find out more at information sessions at the New Park Road branch, Blackburn, on Monday and Thursday, Jan 11 and 14, at 8pm, or phone 01254 662424 or 01282 694929.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.