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A number of countries including Sweden have developed children’s helplines as free and anonymous counseling services for children and youth. The aim of this study was to deepen knowledge about how the problems of children and youth are represented and constructed in Sweden’s BRIS (Children’s Rights in Society) Children’s Helpline, telephone support between the years 1996 and 1998. The work was social constructivistic, examining how helpline responders understand and interpret information received during support calls. The concept of “the concern” is highlighted as a point of study of problem constructions within micro-counselling. The empirical material consisted primarily of interviews with persons who worked at BRIS either as employed ombudspersons or as volunteer telephone responders. Eleven ombudspersons replied to questions about the Children’s Helpline and how support services are organized. Thirty eight interviews were carried out with helpline responders at two separate occasions during the study period. Fifteen of these interviews provided material for an in depth investigation of responders preconceptions of children and youth’s everyday life, as well as the themes of gender, problematic relationships and assault as well as the strategies that responders used in their supportive calls. Statistical information was collected from BRIS reports. Fifteen completed questionnaires from support calls were included in this study. Analytical processes resulted in the development of the two theoretical concepts of familiarity and micro-understanding. General representations of children and youth situations are put forth via descriptions of misery. The responders’ concepts of children’s everyday life appear fragmentary because of the limited information available about the caller. Gender issues are constructed around questions of feminity and sexuality. The theme of assault contains calls from both girls and boys. Boys’ calls about assault are constructed around bullying and physical assault. Girls’ call are also constructed around violence but also include sexual abuse and molestation. This study contributes to the growing field of knowledge about the problem images of children and youth that emanate from support calls made to telephone helplines.

This thesis takes Discursive Psychology as its main theoretical influence. Drawing on the resources of Discursive Psychology and utilising analytic tools provided by Conversation Analysis, these principles are applied to the study of addiction, and specifically alcohol problems. The data explored are telephone calls to an alcohol helpline. Four analytic chapters are presented. The first focuses on the concept of loss of control over drinking, identifying features of how this concept is constructed in talk and suggests possible functions of control talk for both callers and Advice Workers. The second analytic chapter examines how Advice Workers respond to callers' professed impaired control over their drinking and I demonstrate that embedded in discursive sequences of problem formulation and advice giving are issues of agency, accountability and responsibility. The thesis moves on to explore the role of knowledge in calls to an alcohol helpline and the analysis reveals that both the expert status of the Advice Worker and the speciality of the topic are co-constructed between the speakers on the helpline. The final analytic chapter features just one telephone call and demonstrates the application of such an analysis for alcohol service providers. The thesis ends with a discussion of the main overall findings and the implications of the research for clinical practice. I close by arguing that initial agency contact is a very important site of study and recommend that this should be explored utilising naturally-occurring talk.

Problem gambling is a public health issue that affects gamblers, relatives and society in general. The Swedish National Gambling Helpline, Stödlinjen, operates as a primary help to people with problems related to gambling. The 22,260 calls made to the helpline from 2009 to 2016 were studied with regards to gender, age, online gambling, psychosocial problems, and crime. Comparison between gamblers and relatives revealed gender and age differences. Reports of online gambling increased for both groups as time progressed, while crime declined. The results are discussed, and it is concluded that more research on the connection between gambling and crime is needed, as well as further develop a crime-aspect in the counsellors’ documentation of helpline callers.

The West Virginia Prescription Drug Abuse Quitline (WVPDAQ) is a resource that offers education and support to individuals and families affected by prescription drug abuse. The WVPDAQ began functioning September 11, 2008, through the use of mobile phone and laptop technology. Although some helplines and quitlines use some aspects of remote technology, most function through traditional call center and landline technology, making the WVPDAQ unique. This article describes the process evaluation of the WVPDAQ and outlines both the positive findings and challenges faced by the WVPDAQ. Lessons learned and future recommendations for remote quitline endeavors are also presented. It is hoped that the experiences and information regarding the WVPDAQ presented can provide best-practice insight for public health practitioners and evaluation personnel who are considering using alternative technologies to deliver quitline services.

Quality standards of Helpline Arkáda The changes brought about by the Social Services Act apply to all social services. Quality standards have been made into mandatory conditions the providers for social service must comply with. The chief mission of the standards to ensure that service provisions respect and protect the rights of both the service beneficiaries {--} users and those who provide it {--} staff. The changes also involve the inspections of social service quality, which uses the very standards as a measure of quality of the service concerned. The theoretical part of the paper deals with the mission of social work in the context of the Social Services Act and acts laying down the position of social workers that were changed after 1989. The objective of the present thesis is to compile the Arkáda Help Line Quality Standard document meeting the requirements of the Social Services Act and at the same time will reflect the given conditions applying to the very service. Up till now, the quality standards for the service concerned were no available in paper format. Specific documents had only been drafted and used with other information having been disseminated orally with no system in place. The practical part of the paper involves description of specific standards applied to the Arkáda Help Line as foreseen under research and the Social Services. The part describes the aims and methods of providing the social service, the methods of providing for the protection of rights, rules applying to talks between parties interested in the social service, individual agenda of the service provision and the method of handling documentation on the service provision. Moreover, the procedure applying to filing and settling complaints for quality and method of provision of social services is described. The paper further pays attention to the issue of linking the services provided to other available resources. Personal and organisational coverage of the social service and professional development of the staff are further quality indicators and must be incorporated within the standards. Yet another part describes availability of the social services provided in terms of locations and times, access to information on the social service provided and the conditions under which the service is provided. As the staff must be familiar with the possibility of emergency situations, the paper includes a chapter on emergency situations and rules that must be respected if the above is the case. Improving quality of the service is included in conclusion. The present document shall serve as the basis for quality standards for the Arkáda Help Line. It shall be further developed ad used under a paper on the Arkáda Help Line.

This paper aims to provide insight into the risk factors contributing to suicidal ideation and behavior among adolescents. First, the author overviews the extant academic literature on the subject. She highlights the persistently high incidence of suicide among young people in the Czech Republic and briefly defines the stages of adolescence as well as the particular forms and methods of suicidal behavior. Subsequently, the author discusses in detail individual aspects of demographics, clinical data, familial environments and interpersonal relationships that the academic literature associates with an increased risk of suicidality among adolescents. Concluding the overview, the author sets the topic of suicide into the context of a children's crisis helpline. The author goes on to present an empirical analysis of reports documenting suicidal calls made to a children's crisis helpline. She uses both qualitative and quantitative methods to identify particular life circumstances that may contribute to the development of suicidal ideation and/or behavior, paying attention to distinct aspects of suicidality and to gender differences. As part of her analysis, the author critically evaluates the benefits and pitfalls associated with the use of data obtained from an anonymous crisis helpline.

Aktivitetsteorin har rötterna i psykologin men har på senare år använts inom många andra områden, bland annat inom informationsteknologi. Teorin innehåller sex aktörer som används för att identifiera olika delar av ett system för att sedan se hur de påverkar varandra och systemet. Användning av aktivitetsteorin gör att fokus förflyttas från själva teknologin som används till att se teknologin ur ett socialt och kulturellt perspektiv. Teorin är väl utforskad teoretiskt, men mindre utforskad i praktiken. För att utforska möjligheterna med aktivitetsteorin kombinerades den i detta arbete med ämnet psykisk ohälsa. Psykisk ohälsa är ett samhällsproblem som har blivit mer uppmärksammat på senare år, men situationen förbättras inte. Utöver den sjukvård som finns tillgänglig idag för att behandla psykisk ohälsa finns även stödlinjer för att ge stöd åt personer med psykisk ohälsa. I detta kandidatarbete gjordes en fallstudie med den ideella verksamheten Mind som arbetar med att främja psykiskt välbefinnande. De har en stödlinje som heter Självmordslinjen där volontärer samtalar genom chatt eller telefonsamtal med personer som söker stöd i sitt psykiska mående. För att undersöka aktivitetsteorins möjligheter i detta sammanhang utfördes enanalys av kommunikationen som sker mellan volontärerna och stödsökande utifrån volontärernas perspektiv. Studiens datainsamling inleddes med en informationsinsamling om verksamheten. Efter detta hölls en enkät för volontärerna att svara på följt av fyra intervjuer. Insamlade data analyserades sedan med hjälp av aktivitetsteorin. Detta resulterade i insikter om vilka aktörer som ingår i kommunikationen samt hur de påverkar varandra i helhet. Aktivitetsteorin visade sig ge en god översikt över stödlinjen, men vissa svagheter hittades också med teorin i just detta sammanhang, såsom att teorin endast kan anta ett perspektiv. / The activity theory has its roots in psychology but has lately been used in many other fields, such as information technology. The theory includes six actors that are used to identify different parts of a system to then see how they affect each other and the system. The use of the activity theory shifts the focus from the technology that is used to seeing the technology from a social and cultural perspective. The theory is well explored in theory, but less explored in practice. To explore the possibilities with the activity theory it was in this bachelor’s thesis combined with the subject of mental health issues. Mental health is a societal problem that has gotten more attention in the past few years, but the situation is not improving. Beyond the healthcare available today to treat mental health issues there are also helplines to provide support for people with mental health issues. In this bachelor’s thesis, a case study was performed with the non-profit organization Mind which works to promote mental wellbeing. They have a helpline called Självmordslinjen where volunteers speak through the phone or via chat with people seeking support for their mental health. To examine the possibilities of the activity theory in this context, an analysis was performed on the communication between the volunteers and the people in need of support from the volunteers’ perspective. The data collection of the study was initiated with a collection of information about the organization. After this, a questionnaire was held for the volunteers to answer followed by four interviews. The collected data were then analyzed using the activity theory. This resulted in insights into which actors are involved in the communication and how they affect eachother as a whole. The activity theory gave a good overview of the helpline, but some weaknesses were also found in the theory in this context, like the fact that the theory can only adopt one perspective.

(in English) The aim of this work is to perform an in-depth analysis of the workplace of the children's crisis line - Linka bezpečí, focusing on the work of consultants with repeat callers of this line. The chosen subject was processed by a quantitative method (finding the number of calls with long-term clients on the crisis line during the six-month period, the duration of these calls, the topics that repeat callers bring to the calls on the line, etc.) and the qualitative method - organization a focus group with Linka bezpečí line's staff to find out their potential to work with long-term clients. The main result of the thesis is a summary of the findings, which make the work with the long-term calling clients easy for the workers and which, on the contrary, make it difficult, along with practical tips for practice.

The diploma thesis: "Impacts of supervision on resilience of helpline workers" presents the results of case study focused on particular helpline, the case of which is the impact of supervision on workers feeling themselves comfortable with their professional roles on helpline. The theoretical part of the thesis deals with the key concepts of resilience and supervision, and presents the general characteristic of helplines, the method of telephone crisis intervention and the social service of telephone crisis assistance. The empirical part of the thesis explains the context of the particular helpline which was the subject of case study. The main topic of the research is: mastering of helpline workers of their professional roles and the influence of supervision on its changes in time. The research captures the changes of perception of supervision and of its effect on helpline workers dealing with their professional roles.