My Experience as a Volunteer Helpline Manager

December 2023

Perspectives: Volunteer

"Often, I am the first person that the caller has voiced their concerns to and had the vulnerability to admit they need help. That takes courage."

 

I grew up with a brother who was addicted to heroin, alcohol and cannabis.

I was 10 years younger than him, and his addictions had a huge impact on my parents, sister and me. I never knew what mood he would be in when he walked in the door. Violence was common as he suffered from hallucinations and paranoia secondary to psychosis from the drugs.

I spent many nights unable to sleep, hiding under my bed and wishing for help from him and from the people who would turn up at our house threatening us because he owed them money. He got expelled from school so many times that eventually the education board banned him from school completely, at the age of 16.

He had a fabulous personality when he wasn't high and found interviewing for jobs easy. He was, however, never able to hold down a job once the employer became aware of his addiction.

I am happy to report that my brother eventually overcame his addictions - on his own - but it took 20 years and a lot of loss and suffering for him and everyone around him.

As a confused child, I often wondered why no one helped him or us. He had friends that were also addicts so I knew it wasn't uncommon - so why were we not being helped? This was in the pre-internet era and there was a huge stigma surrounding mental illness and addiction. I realise there probably were places around that could have helped him, but my parents were too ashamed to ask around and thus there was never any help for us.

Our family remains to this day fragmented because of addiction. I still wonder from time to time if things would be different if help had been more accessible.

Fast forward to today - I am a doctor and a proud mother. I started practicing during the height of the methamphetamine addiction in Australia. Our emergency department was constantly half full - overdoses, people hallucinating from the drugs and others who had reached rock bottom, begging for help.

I spent a lot of time talking to them and their families and realised that being the first point of contact for a person seeking help was extremely important.

My interaction with them could propel them forward, give them hope and begin to remove the stigma they were feeling or cause them to leave and not seek help again. I regularly used the word brave to describe how I felt about my patients who had come to ask for help in a world where there remained a huge stigma surrounding addiction.

When I moved to Singapore 15 years ago and stopped practicing medicine, I devoted my time to having and looking after my 4 children. When my youngest turned 4, I realised I wanted to do something more with my time and looked for volunteering opportunities. I started asking friends and acquaintances for recommendations that might be a good fit for me.

I am usually quite fussy in because integrity is important to me. I wanted to volunteer at a place that did good work and did it to high ethical standards. One recommendation was WE CARE, a caring and supportive organisation both with clients and staff. And so, I emailed in, and the rest is history.

I started volunteering on the helpline and have really enjoyed the experience. Even though I am not seeing these people in person, the same theory from my time in the emergency department applies. Often, I am the first person that the caller has voiced their concerns to and had the vulnerability to admit they need help. That takes courage. Being able to validate their feelings and encourage them to continue the process is so important.

I need to be able to gauge quite quickly how to approach the caller. Some have made up their minds about seeking help and they are moving forward no matter what - those are the easier calls. Some are calling to feel out the centre and they are the callers that need a lot more care.

Surprisingly, my Australian accent is often an icebreaker. The caller is not expecting my voice and we spend a minute or two discussing my accent, where I am from and how I ended up volunteering for WE CARE. This diffuses anxiety and allows the caller to feel comfortable before we move into a deeper and more vulnerable conversation.

I have now finished my Masters in Psychiatry, Psychology and Neurosciences and am starting my Master of Counselling. I hope to continue on the helpline for some time before eventually moving into addiction counselling face to face.

I am so grateful for the opportunity to work with an organisation that provides the help that I wish was available to my family when I was young.

 

By Donna

Donna is a Volunteer Helpline Manager at WE CARE