Mental health experts are aghast at the training Social Security Administration workers are receiving from the Trump administration on how to handle suicidal callers.
According to Government Executive, “SSA recently began shifting new swaths of its workforce to phone answering duty, including those who normally receive and process retirement and disability claims, manage the agency’s technology and work in the agency’s finances unit. Those employees received brief, three-hour training before they began answering calls. As part of that training, they were warned some callers may express suicidal ideation and presented with examples using a theoretical employee named Fiona.”
In a video obtained from the training, an animated instructor tells the employees, “It’s important for Fiona to keep the caller engaged and to remind her that suicide is only one option, and that there is no urgency to make any decisions.”
Per the report, “Employees at the training, which occurred on Jan. 26 for benefits authorizers and post-entitlement technical experts, were taken aback by the comment and asked their supervisors for clarity. One employee at the training said there was ‘disbelief that it was just said’ among those in the room.”
Mental health professionals were also horrified at the training. “It’s not a normal thing to say,” said Caitlan Thompson, a clinical psychologist who worked for the Veterans Administration. “No. That’s not the thing you say to somebody who might be suicidal.” She advised that government workers who encounter a suicidal caller should ask them if they feel safe, and then connect them to a trained crisis line.
Another expert said that the advice was “odd” and “If that is the one thing that they are being told to say, it puts the person on both sides in a potentially precarious situation.”
This comes following reports that the Trump administration has mismanaged caseloads at SSA to the point of a massive backlog.
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