While the inside of the REAL Crisis Center looks like a typical office, what happens there is anything but typical, as counselors handled more than 95,000 calls from people in crisis in 2023. Credit: Rose Hoban

The first thing you notice when you walk into the 988 REAL Crisis Center in Greenville is how peaceful it feels. And quiet.

That’s intentional, said Tracy Kennedy, the center’s executive director. She has been working with the suicide and crisis prevention hotline since 1992, and one of her goals is to keep the atmosphere calm. There’s enough turmoil in callers’ lives that her crisis counselors — they’re not just operators, they’re trained professionals — likely couldn’t be as effective in a noisy, chaotic workplace.

“We really just try our best to whatever is gonna make you comfortable, but yet productive,” Kennedy explained.

It’s hard stuff that her workers are exposed to.

“[Callers] can sometimes be very agitated. They yell, scream, rant and rave, call you names,” she added. “They can be very angry sometimes.”

There’s a multipage policy on inappropriate behavior between counselors. The policy on inappropriate behavior for callers? One page.

“This is not a happy place. Even though we’re trying our best to be as compassionate and have as much empathy as possible, the people that call here are not happy,” Kennedy said. “And [callers are] not gonna be happy when they get off. That’s not our goal. Our goal is never to make someone happy.”

Instead, Kennedy said the goal is for people to feel heard, have their crisis defused, as much as possible, and get referred to resources that can help them.

Through all the challenges of interacting with people who are considering suicide, Kennedy is running an effective and essential operation.

North Carolina’s 988 service, by many metrics, is working. In the year between December 2022 and the end of November 2023, Kennedy’s team of 50 workers handled more than 95,000 calls, answering 98 percent of the calls routed to the people staffing a nondescript office building on a busy avenue.

There are at least five counselors available at any hour, every day of the year. Even more are online in the evenings. The service didn’t stop during flooding from Hurricane Matthew or other natural disasters. At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the service had 48 hours to go fully remote, and they never stopped answering phones, texts and chat messages — even as they were having to deploy new technology to cope.

According to a dashboard created by the state Department of Health and Human Services, calls to the NC 988 Lifeline are answered, on average, in 14.3 seconds — much quicker than the national average of about 39 seconds.

Diverse workplace

This kind of work is not for the faint of heart. Nor is it a career that requires a specific academic background.

Ideally, Kennedy wants staff for the 988 Lifeline to have degrees in human resources or human services and several years of experience. But that’s not always the case.

“A lot of people like to start their career here,” Kennedy said, noting that they hire many new college graduates who think they might want to go into psychology.

Some of her counselors, though, are retired professionals looking to keep working part time. Many of her hires stay for two to two-and-a-half years, Kennedy said, but some folks stick with it for as long as seven years.

Some people, though, bow out quickly when they realize that tending to crises every day or night on the job is not for them.

“I always have that percentage that run 90 days and are like, ‘This isn’t for me,’” Kennedy said, noting that it’s better that they realize it and move on. “Hundred percent understand that, hundred percent respect that.”

Given the broad range of callers and their wide variety of issues, Kennedy tries to keep her workforce as diverse as possible. That means sometimes life experience trumps academic preparation.

“We like different races, different orientations, different religions — can’t ask about religion, but what we can ask is ‘What makes you unique? What unique lived experience do you bring here?’ and we try to embrace that,” Kennedy said.

One job applicant who came to his interview wearing duck shoes piqued her interest. “I mean, come on. He’s wearing duck shoes. How much more unique can you be?” Kennedy said.

What she is looking for, ultimately, is a diverse team with at least one person on at any shift who “gets” what most any caller is going through. “It’s not about us sharing personal experiences and exposures [with callers], but can we relate,” Kennedy added.

That can play out when callers choose to be connected to special services for people who are LGBTQ+, are Spanish-speakers or perhaps are veterans.

“If somebody calls in and they are having an issue, let’s say … a gender issue. Of course we’ll talk to them, and we can say, ‘If the other counselor agrees, there’s somebody else here that’s transgender, would you feel more comfortable?’” Kennedy said.

“If it’s a 72-year-old woman, I’m not sending in a 22-year-old. Sorry, I’m going to find the oldest person — probably going to be me — to go on in there to have some relatability,” she said. “But if it’s a 22-year-old and wants to talk about dating advice, I might not be the right person for that.”

That relatability is particularly important for callers who are veterans.

“You cannot minimize what veterans see. There’s no way of minimizing that four of your friends were killed in front of you. There’s no going ‘they’re in a better place.’ There’s no going ‘at least you made it.’ There is nothing to minimize that except for ‘Wow,’” she said.

Supportive workplace

On a Wednesday afternoon, Kennedy welcomed a team of reporters from NC Health News. While giving an inside view of the center, she also protected the counselors at work that day, as well as the callers seeking help. She limited photographs in the inner sanctum too.

She wanted the call-takers to remain focused on what they were there to do and make them comfortable.

One counselor roamed the carpeted floor barefoot as she listened to a caller through a wireless headset. Another counselor was taking a break in a quiet room with low lights, calming video, books, a cot and yoga equipment. No phones allowed.

“The environment in that quiet room is all about … decompressing,” Kennedy said.

It’s also a place where employees can support each other. They post notes of encouragement for coworkers on a peer-to-peer bulletin board, or leave a word of praise for someone who’s handled a challenging suicidal caller. One of the notes on the board was addressed to a team supervisor: “Thank you for being such a supportive supervisor. You’ve shown great leadership and amazing guidance to myself.”

Supervisors can listen to how counselors are responding to callers, and if a counselor is having trouble, they can put up a flag in their cubicle to alert a supervisor they need help.

Another aspect of that guidance is a constant regimen of training. All counselors go through a two-day interactive training program, ASIST (Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training), and are required to complete frequent quality improvement exercises. Flat-screen monitors mounted high on the walls have a rotating series of messages: “Staff is required to answer phones up to and until the end of shift. Do not ‘stop taking calls’ 30 minutes before end of shift,” read one message.

Even decades into the work, Kennedy still goes through the training because, she said, there’s always something new to learn.

“We have to be humbled in this field,” Kennedy added. “The moment you know, no matter what, that you’ve got the answer, this isn’t a place for you.”