Crisis policy and crisis page
Hi All,
Today I am writing to follow-up & provide some more context on a topic we all care greatly about - our crisis referral policy.
I would first like to apologize for any confusion you may have experienced regarding the policy. The policy on crisis referral has been the same since 7 Cups was born in 2013 and we will do a better job of communicating this policy across the site to all users so its clear and we are all on the same page.
We have been working hard behind the scenes to figure out the best way to approach this topic. We heard from the community, we researched what other communities like ours do, we researched what the best practices are in the peer community, spoken to licensed psychologists and so much more….
Today, we are going to reveal one piece of the puzzle. We want to emphasize that this will be an ongoing project that we continue to strengthen.
We are excited to announce that we will be adding a Crisis referral page to our site. It will be easily accessible from the site footer and listed under chat drop down. It will be available for members and listeners to utilize. Listeners will be able to refer members to this page easily.
Note on the page contents:
Right now, we are working on creating a training process and protocol that would leverage the QPR (question persuade refer) process. It may take some time to get this guide created. Additionally, we will be making another post on how to manage crimes or other types of crisis. Please stay tuned for that.
In the meantime, we ask that you use this onsite crisis page to help educate one another on how to best support individuals who are in crisis. Please always refer someone who is in crisis. As we do not have training in place to teach you how to differentiate between a passive or actively suicidal individual right now, in both scenarios, we ask you to refer the individuals to crisis hotlines. You may also refer anyone directly to this new crisis page as to ensure they are clear on the policy.
Again, we are working to build out a more comprehensive training program on how to manage a warm hand off to the crisis centers. But this will take some time, we ask you that you are patient and supportive of this process.
Thank you all for being patient so far! We are excited to continue to make this a stronger process.