Therapy service gives support to educators
A handful of state services continue to expand as they seek to provide a lifeline for Tennessee’s essential workers struggling during the coronavirus pandemic.
Created in May, the confidential Emotional Support Line for Pandemic Stress is open to essential workers to discuss their anxiety due to the coronavirus pandemic. The line expanded to include educators in December and enabled a texting feature on Monday.
“There’s a substantial number
of people who are just more comfortable texting, and there’s also a substantial number of people who feel like it’s more private, that they can sit in a staff room, for example, and text somebody about an issue. They’re not having an open conversation that people can
overhear, they just feel it’s more confidential and they’re more comfortable doing it,” said Mary Linden Salter, executive director of the Tennessee Association of Alcohol, Drug & Other Addiction Services.
The line was created with collaboration among Salter’s group and several other Tennessee organizations, including Mental Health Active Response Team, the Tennessee chapter of the National Association of Social Workers and the Tennessee Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services.
Unlike a hotline, which is used for crisis situations, the emotional support line is known as a “warmline,” allowing people to talk through their distress and call-takers can provide them with referrals. As of March 31, there have been 202 warmline callers who needed emotional support, Salter said.
“The chief goal of the call-taker is to help people prioritize what it is they need to work on and make a plan, and one of those elements of a plan may be to seek a therapist, it may be just to prioritize some selfcare or some other decision-making points in their life so that they can manage their stress,” Salter said.
Mental Health Active Response Team initially oversaw operations of the line, which was staffed by volunteer licensed professional counselors. In September, daily operations of the line went to the Tennessee Association of Alcohol, Drug & Other Addiction Services, and Family and Children Services. The contract staff also operate the Tennessee REDLINE and other hotlines, Salter said, which enables all shifts of the emotional support line to be staffed.
In September, Mental Health Active Response Team created a pro bono therapy service that provides four free therapy sessions to essential workers including groups like grocery store workers, retail workers and more. The service is primarily staffed by volunteer therapists, including those who volunteer for the emotional support line, and is funded through grant money Mental Health Active Response Team received last year.
“We were already seeing the growing need. While we were staffing all the volunteers for the support line in-house, we didn’t really have the manpower to do both, but when we handed off and we weren’t having to daily do the scheduling and keeping up actually answering the support line, then we had the ability to re-utilize those resources and we already had this idea in the back pocket,” said TJ Stone, executive coordinator of Mental Health Active Response Team.
The therapy service has about 120 volunteers, and 53 pro bono therapy requests have been filled. About half of the 53 pro bono therapy requests so far have come from educators, Stone said.