"I'm 14, and I want to go home."
"My name is Beth, I'm here for you, tell me more."
"I've run away before, but I've never been involved with anything like this. I think they put drugs in my liquor."
"It sounds like you feel you're not safe. The fastest way for me to get help to you is for you to call 911."
"LOL, Beth. If they hear me, they'll kill me. They're about to send another man in to have sex with me, please hurry."
"OK, it sounds like you're in danger. I can call 911 for you and send help. You're being very brave."
"Thanks, Beth. Tell the police to be careful, these men are armed."
I can share this story with you, because it was widely reported in news outlets throughout the country. We did call 911. The police rescued this girl, two other girls, and arrested three men, all at the Motel 6 in San Jose.
My name is Nancy "Beth" Lublin. I'm the cofounder and CEO of Crisis Text Line, the free 24/7 service that helps people by text and Messenger, with mental health and behavioral health issues. And when I go on the platform as a crisis counselor, I use the alias "Beth." I happen to be the crisis counselor who took that conversation. But this is what Crisis Text Line is. It's strangers helping strangers in their darkest moments to stay alive, feel less alone, and to remind them how strong they are.
Crisis Text Line launched quietly in August 2013 in Chicago and in El Paso, and within four months, we were in all 274 area codes of the United States, because people used the service, had a great experience and shared it with their friends -- that's organic growth. And in six and a half years, we've now processed about 150 million messages. The people who use our free 24/7 service skew young, because it's text, so they skew young. 45 percent are under the age of 17. Also poor, racially diverse. 17 percent identify as Hispanic, and 44 percent LGBTQ.
The top five issues that we see are relationships, depression, anxiety, self-harm and in approximately one in four conversations, suicidal ideation. Everyone texting us is unhappy, yet we normally have about an 86 percent satisfaction rating from our texters. What makes it so good? The technology, the data and the people.
So, the technology. It is not an app. It's not something you have to download. It's free, there's no complicated intake survey, so it's really user-friendly. You just text us. We use machine learning to stack-rank the queue based on severity. Kind of like a hospital emergency room would take the gunshot wound before the kid with a sprained ankle. We work the same way. So we take the high-risk cases first. So the person who swallowed a bottle of pills would come before someone else.
This is data science to save lives. But it's humans who do the counseling. We've trained over 28,000 volunteer crisis counselors who apply online, go through a background check and then about a 30-hour training. And if they pass -- not everybody passes, there's only a 33 percent pass rate -- they can save lives from their couch. It's a new gig economy for volunteerism, like Uber or Lyft for volunteerism. And we also have full-time staff with a master's degree in a relevant field. They're supervisors, and they watch every conversation and step in if needed.
Thanks to this technology and data and our volunteer labor model, we're able to reach tons of people in pain. People who don't have access to other resources, like the gay teenager who can't share with his parents, because they keep telling him to pray the gay away. Or the girl who can't sleep at 2am because she's got anxiety about finals and she doesn't want to disappoint people who love her. So they text us. And we love on them. And we support them, and we remind them how strong they are. And we work on a plan together to stay safe. And we tell them that if this felt good, sharing with us -- and 68 percent of people say they've shared something with us they've never shared with another human, so if it feels good to share with us, maybe find just one other person in your life tomorrow to share with.
And after our conversation, they put that safety plan in place. And maybe they go to sleep. Or they journal. Or they listen to BTS or Lizzo, or they write a letter to their sister or their boss or to themselves, to read in 12 months. They stay safe.
Sometimes, people have the ideation, the plan, the means and the timing to hurt themselves or someone else, and we can't deescalate. Like the man in Texas, five years ago on Christmas Eve, who told us he only felt pleasure when he inflicted pain and he wanted to kill women and was going to do it that very night. In those imminent risk situations, we call 911. And thank goodness for 911, because in that Texas incident, as reported in the news, they did send help, they sent the police to his home, and they found him with an arsenal of loaded weapons and on record as being in possession of a human foot.
Now, active rescues are less than one percent of our conversations. But still, that's about 26 a day. And six of those a week are for homicide. Typically school shooters. We have now completed more than 32,000 active rescues.
Our own data and external studies show that we're very good at saving lives, and at changing lives. We use the data to make it possible for us to change systems. So for example, we've learned the best way, the best language to risk-assess around suicidal ideation isn't to use the words, "Are you thinking of committing suicide?" Instead, it's to use words like, "Are you thinking of death or dying?" Or "Are you thinking about killing yourself?" And now, we've shared that language with journalists, to adopt this. We've shared that language with activists. We're advising the National Emergency Number Association, the 911 Association, on best practices for first responders in suicide. And we're working with the Veterans Administration to identify suicidal ideation and intent in veterans.
(Sighs)
Pain isn't an American experience. It's a human experience. So we've been growing. So far, we've been expanding one country at a time: Ireland, the UK, Canada -- which we did in both French and English. And we could keep growing, one country at a time. And it would take us decades to reach even just a third of the people in the world. And that's just not acceptable. We've already seen, since the start of COVID in early March, a 40 percent increase in our volume. 78 percent of our conversations include words like "freaked out," "scared," "panic." People are worried about the COVID virus, and so they're nervous about symptoms and they're concerned for family on the front lines.
We're also seeing the impact of the quarantines themselves. People are away from their routines, perhaps they're quarantined with abusive people. So we've seen a 48 percent increase in sexual abuse, and a 74 percent increase in domestic violence. One of the biggest impacts we've seen of the virus and the lockdowns is the financial stress. We're seeing more people reach out with fears of bankruptcy, fears of homelessness and other financial ruin. And right now, 32 percent of our texters identify as coming from household incomes under 20,000 dollars. That's up from our typical 19 percent low income.
So we need to grow. Quickly. For months, we were planning on announcing that we were going to expand by language: Five languages in the next five years, covering 32 percent of the globe. And then, COVID happened. Things changed. And now five years feels like a luxury.
So today, right now, we are committing to do it in half the time. Five languages in two and a half years. We're going to turn on Spanish everywhere, English everywhere, Portuguese everywhere, French everywhere, and the fifth language? Arabic. So we're going to bring our service to countries and populations that have limited mental health services and almost no data about what's going on. These include immigrant populations -- who have phones. And young people, who are often not counted in studies, but they have phones.
So we're going to shift to language, which makes the technology easier, because in addition to text, we're going to be using WhatsApp and Messenger. And global expansion helps us with middle-of-the-night capacity, because we'll have time-zone coverage. So think about it, this will be strangers helping strangers around the world. Like a giant global love machine.
And the fact that the TED community has supported our audacious dream is just deeply, deeply meaningful, to me and to everybody on our team. And the best way for us to show our gratitude is to just let you know that we are ready and we are fired up. And we're going to use this support to impact millions of lives around the world. Times are hard. And it's confusing, and it's depressing, and sometimes, we all feel alone, especially in isolation. But no matter what age, no matter what your situation is or where you live, we'll be at your fingertips, in your pocket.
I've been thinking a lot these last few weeks about that trafficked girl who I connected with. And I hope she's somewhere safe. I don't know ... I don't know how she's quarantined or who she's with, but I hope she's safe. And I don't know, last year, how she had our number, or even how she had access to a phone to reach out to us. I never asked her. Because it didn't matter. What mattered was that she could contact us, that she did have it, and we got help to her quickly. And that's the goal, it's to make it easier for people to get help than avoid getting help. That in moments of hardship, of danger, of physical distance, that nobody is ever alone. That thanks to Crisis Text Line, none of us is ever actually alone.
[Support this initiative at AudaciousProject.org]
