Teens among frequent callers to helplines

Calls complaining about anxiety triggered by job insecurity and rocky relationships are flooding Bengaluru’s helplines. The city’s free helplines provide a sympathetic ear to anybody who wants to talk about anything anonymously. Callers with suicidal thoughts form a small percentage of those seeking help, Metrolife found.

Kids blackmailed 

When Sa-Mudra Yuva Foundation started a youth helpline in 2008, their callers majorly comprised students battling academic failure. Today, the same demography is seeking a way out of gadget, porn and substance addiction and relationship conflicts, says founder Bharathi Singh.

“An 18-year-old was feeling suicidal because he felt he had brought disgrace to his family. He and a few friends had taken an interest-free loan from an app to buy a bike. He could repay the loan when he started earning, the agents had said. But three months later, they started blackmailing him for money and used abusive language against his sister,” recalls Bharathi.

She cites another case study: “A girl transferred a huge sum of money to her friend’s boyfriend using her grandmother’s phone. When the transaction was found out, the girl suffered panic attacks. She started showing signs of isolation and sleep deprivation. She wanted to drop out of school.”

Children also suffer when their parents are in distressing circumstances. “A teenager could not concentrate on her exams because her mother was being financially and sexually harassed by their neighbour when their father was away. Informing her father would lead to a rift among parents,” she says.

Usually, more women seek help to resolve marital and parental discord but men are catching up too. She says, “A man wanted to end his life because his wife did not like their adopted son growing close to him. She wanted him to send the boy to an orphanage.”

Sa-Mudra Yuva Foundation: 98803 96331, 9.30 am to 6 pm, all days.

Sexual dysfunction 

Pukar Foundation opened its helpline last August. In the 20-30 age group, concerns around sexual dysfunction and intimacy, and confusion over gender identity and cross-dressing dominate the calls, says cofounder Dolly Sharma.

Anger against parents is a recurring sentiment among young callers. They are upset because they are not allowed to choose a career they want, or are treated unfairly among siblings and compared unfavourably to friends.

Earlier, physical abuse led to the breakdown of marriages, now emotional distance is becoming a key factor. “Affairs, or ‘encounters’, are taking a toll on relationships and partners express regret over their actions,” she says.

About 20 per cent of callers expressed suicidal thoughts and 5% were at risk of suicide, according to their recent records. “Often, people feel triggered when a suicide case is in the news,” she says.

Pukar Foundation: 96638 96669, 10 am to 2 pm, all days.

Online gambling

In six years of service, distress calls to Arpita Foundation have gone up from one or two to 15-20 a day. Mostly people call to express their pent-up anxieties and clear their mind, and lately, this confusion is stemming from digital dependence.

Cofounder Patrick Vaz shares, “Students say they can’t focus on studies because of mobile addiction. To avoid being probed on poor academics, they distance themselves from their parents.” Because of unsupervised access to mobile phones, children are finding themselves in dire straits, from unwittingly losing lakhs of money to gaming to getting addicted to pornography.

Working adults — some of them looking to clear debt — fall victim to online gambling. “A man had borrowed Rs 30-40 lakh via credit cards and from multiple people by telling lies. He lost the money to gambling and went into depression,” he shares.

A high volume of callers talk about misunderstandings in relationships. Vaz says married couples in cities are up against more stressors than before —
rising cost of living, shrinking job security, lack of time for each other, and frustration over traffic. “And in purely online relationships, partners can’t gauge each other’s emotional needs,” he adds.

Arpita Foundation: 080 2365 5557/2365 6667, 9 am to 9 pm, all days.

Bossy parents

Marriage and unemployment problems form the bulk of calls coming to Sahai, a service of the Medico-Pastoral Association. Pointing out infrequent cases, secretary Alphonse Kurian says school children complain about parents “bossing” over them and working professionals bring up problems with their seniors. Students talk about being ghosted by their partners and skipping college after a break-up.

Sahai: 080 25497777, 10 am-5 pm, Mon-Sat

'More male callers'

Parivarthan helpline has been operating for 14 years and attends 3,000 calls on average a year. “We started it to help those who were feeling ‘stuck’, largely women. Now, a large volume of our calls are related to anxiety, depression and relationship-based challenges. Traditionally, more women than men come forward for counselling, but in the helpline, we get more male callers. Maybe it’s because of the anonymity (of the service),” says one of the directors, Vivek Varma.

Parivarthan: 767660 2602, 1 pm to 10 pm, Mon-Fri

Corporate world anxieties

Shanu Choudhary leads partner-management and supervises night-duty counsellors for a 24/7 toll-free employee wellbeing helpline run
by 1to1Help. She has seen a spike in calls related to a lack of personal
development, infidelity, and anxiety around health. But the inability to achieve work-life balance remains the top concern. 

Marriage pressure and parenting conflict also drive women to seek help. Senior managers battle the empty nest syndrome (grief parents feel
when their children move out of home) and isolation associated with
impending retirement.