English Teacher Sung Worked for Years on Suicide Crisis Hotlines, and Has Important Stories to Share

by Eikaiva Boyer for Walkersville High School Lion’s Pride

Diana Sung, an English teacher at Walkersville High School, has one of the most interesting stories to be told.  For a grand total of four and a half years, ending in 2014, she worked on two crisis hotlines, one in Prince George’s (PG) County and the other in Frederick County. Everyone is familiar with the telephone number 911, but what about 211? 211 is a Maryland-wide program information and referral line. This line provides support for persons in need of someone to simply listen to them while they are in a dark place and persons in need of other social services.

When Sung taught in Prince George’s County, she started volunteering in 2006 on a weekly basis for the PG Community Crisis Hotline Center as a suicide counselor. She had to complete an extensive 40-hour training period. After training, the class listened to specialists taking calls and eventually started taking calls themselves with specialist/coach supervision. It was not just a suicide prevention line Sung worked on, it was a local crisis line, a homeless line, a variety of similarly themed crisis hotlines, and a utility and housing line (welfare programs). Sung mentioned that “a lot of local agencies that work crisis hotlines have started partnering with the Department of Social Services so that they can handle the crisis intake piece, and then help connect individuals to [specific] services.”

Sung was then quickly hired part time as a weekend volunteer. “I very quickly realized it was something I enjoyed a great deal,” said Sung. She then left to go to South Korea to teach English for the next three years. When she returned to the United States she started volunteering again after getting another teaching job in PG County. She then decided to leave education for a variety of reasons, but the main reason was that a full-time position opened up at [the] PG County hotline. She became a supervisor for volunteers in training in the evening. “I loved it. It was a fantastic job.” But Sung was starting a family at the time, “As underpaid public school teaching is and how underpaid being a full time volunteer is,” she said with a laugh.

She stopped working at the hotline and returned to teaching. “I went back to teaching because I really missed it. I missed the kids. So I started applying for jobs and that’s when I got hired at Walkersville.” Sung then moved to Frederick County and soon after began volunteering for the Frederick County Hotline (run by the Mental Health Association [MHA],) as a part-time counselor. When she switched to the Frederick County hotline, she had to complete another 40 hours of training.

The PG and Frederick County hotlines answer similar hotlines, but the Frederick hotline had different lines. While Sung was working there, they started a walk-in crisis center as part of the MHA, similar to Montgomery County. “People were actually physically there as trained counselors, and people could drop in and have a crisis issue which is great because as a crisis counselor if there’s an issue where if someone really need[ed] to talk to someone right away. In the past [the person’s] only option would be the hospital.”

Another hotline that Frederick County does not have is the “Trevor Lifeline.” It is a national project program dedicated to suicide prevention among LGBT teens and the LGBT community. LGBT teens have one of the highest risks in the country for suicide. While in PG County Sung worked on this hotline for quite a bit, “The Trevor [Life]line in particular since it was so supportive of LGBT teens, [it] drew a lot of combination of prank calling and those [that were] judgmental.” Sung commented on how the callers would ask her why she’s answering a line that supports a gay lifestyle. Her answer was always, “Well, the mission of the Trevor Lifeline is to save young people from killing themselves. Are you opposed to that? That would usually shut most of them up,” she said in all seriousness but then with a giggle at the end.

Sung wasn’t really sure what she wanted to do with her life, even after majoring in English and Math. “It’s incredibly ironic that I ended up becoming a high school English teacher, because of how miserable my high school experience was, and it wasn’t necessarily a fault to my institution or my teachers, but just that the combination of dealing with mental illness and the unique challenges to being a teenager in an institution that is not always set up to support challenges that students have and [then] (Sung herself) being able to come through academics and deal with all those issues,” said Sung.

During high school, Sung struggled with depression. “Most people who do these hotlines…it’s for a variety of reasons, but it’s always very, very personal. There were a couple times where I used a crisis hotline like (the PG and Frederick County hotlines), and it was really supportive. And that’s not necessarily completely the reason I did it (started volunteering for a crisis hotline), I just had a positive experience, but it was that idea that I have come through it on the other side and I wanted to help others who may not be there [yet].”

Working on the crisis hotlines “made me more aware that everyone is human. And that awareness changes how you approach things, changes how you approach relationships; it changes how you approach your life. It interestingly made me less tolerant of excuses but more understanding of why people use excuses and how to help people get through those excuses. It made me much more selective in my own life with who I trust with myself in real kinds of ways. It made me more willing to be vulnerable in ways that are significant and powerful for the people I’m interacting with on a daily basis,” said Sung.

After working for so long on a crisis hotline Sung feels that some things can wear on you, “when you’re doing this kind of work–this is true in all social services fields–that sometimes it’s so consistently dark and there are people that just don’t seem to want to actually fix the issues that are bothering them. And that’s a very judgmental way of saying it but we do have some people who call the hotlines persistently about the same issue daily, year in, year out, never making any progress on that [specific] issue.” Sung commented that that’s the nature of the mental health field. “There are some individuals who get stuck in a place and it’s the same thing as the social service [hotline], like there are certain individuals who month in month out, get in a situation where financially they can’t scrape together the rent and they’re in that position every month. It can be really hard to not get emotionally tired from being that supportive listener for people who are stuck for that period of time.”

Sung mentioned that prank calling is another issue on that is encountered on the hotline,  “It happens all the time; with young people it didn’t bother me as much.” This is because lot of research has been shown that what a lot of prank callers are, are actually “lying testers.” This means, a lot of younger people, especially middle school students will prank call the line as a group or an individual, to see what kind of response they get to see how they are treated. “Then they might call the line legitimately later if they felt they were dealt with in a way that was respectful but still boundary setting,” said Sung.

Sung ended her career with the crisis hotline in 2014. Reflecting on her experience with the hotline, she commented that “it made me a better teacher, a better friend, a better person. It gave me insight on the whole process of being on a call and listening to someone.”

Sung feels that one of the biggest perceptions of the crisis hotline atmosphere is that “you don’t save anyone from anything. It’s really not about that; it’s about listening, [and] acknowledging the very real pain that that person is experiencing when they’re calling a crisis hotline. The process of being a person who is listening and empathizing with and understanding another person’s story [is that] you have to make that connection with someone who is in a very dark place again, and again, and again, and again.”

Unfortunately Sung mentioned that “sometimes the incredibly intense emotional calls don’t go the place that you were hoping it would go.  Sometimes the two-hour long calls you have to end because you do have to send emergency services because the person just won’t be able to be safe in any other way. Those make you feel bad. You don’t want to do that because that’s not why that person called. Sometimes it is why that person called and then it is very easy to send the emergency services, but most of the time when people are calling is because some part of them still wants to live. Sometimes you don’t know if it’s a happy ending or a sad ending, but it is powerful, it is intense.”

The longest call Sung was on lasted for three and a half hours, “It was so long because the Arizona police couldn’t locate the person.”

Sung feels she made a connection with each person she talked to. “I really felt that that person was heard and validated in some way. It did make me feel positive, but it wasn’t always about that. It was about like, some people go into this [type of work] saying ‘I’m going to save people, I’m going to help people,’ and actually those people often burn out faster than other people because it’s unrealistic. But just being able to be a support and knowing that if the call was the reason that that person could get through their day, is really powerful.” She also added that there are times where past caller’s call back and thank them for their services.

Sung believes that her work on crisis hotlines has affected her everyday life and who she is as a person. “I try to listen before I say something. I try, and don’t always succeed, to be more understanding and empathetic, [which is] not always easy. I try to remember that people are people.” Sung feels she wouldn’t have the kind of relationship she has with her husband if it wasn’t for working on the hotlines, “It taught me to look at the positive qualities in people and the truth of the person. He is a man who is seven years older than me, from a totally different culture, living with his mom, [who] I met in a bar. I think we have so many judgments about [the qualities of a person] and people who check all the boxes but are so cruel, [and] impatient, and who don’t really value other people in their lives. And that’s what you need in a person who’s close to you. I don’t even know if I would even be a mom or be married if I hadn’t gone through this process. I don’t know if I would trust the way I interacted with people enough to enter into something like that.”

Sung stressed that “if you are in need of a confidential call and you’re scared, just pick up the phone, call 211. It’ll get you right to someone. Don’t hesitate. Even if you want to talk about a friend, don’t worry about it, just do it.”