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Imagine this: Five days a week, as a full-time job, you go to work, sit at a desk in a cubicle, and offer phone-based counseling to American military veterans who are contemplating suicide, battling depression, or suffering from other traumatic mental health issues. It’s an incredibly necessary, but uncommonly demanding job that would require the utmost in patience, compassion, and emotional fortitude. That’s the job featured in Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1 (2013), where a team of a couple hundred mental health-trained advisors field over 1,000 calls per day from distressed vets.

With American veterans committing suicide at a rate of 22 people per day, the crisis line is a very real, and very necessary means of support. But it’s a job that is taxing on those attempting to provide comfort.

The film highlights a handful of crisis center responders, allowing us to listen in on their half of hotline conversations. The responders’ emotions and dialogue promote instant empathy, both for the troubled individual on the other end of the line and for the person we’re watching, doing everything they can to help.

When the advisors finish particularly challenging calls, they receive their own form of counseling; a supervisor steps in to review how things went, ensure them they did a good job, and offer a hug or two. It maintains a balance within their own emotional boundaries, and is crucial for their own emotional health.

“It’s not an easy job answering phones for hours at a time, always with someone on the other end about to or in the middle of ending his/her life. The toil that takes is immeasurable because you only need one person to carry out the threat before the countless other survivors are rendered moot. It is most definitely a victory when these responders can smile and sigh with relief after the words “you take care now” travel over the phone. That satisfaction despite being shaken to the core from the highly emotional work completed is a miraculous thing.” - JaredMobarak.com

What’s impressive is not only that these individuals can handle call after call of this nature, but they’re doing so while balancing an in-office logistics process they’re engaged with while on the call. Beyond the important practice of establishing rapport and consoling the person on the line, responders are instant messaging with a dispatcher in the next cubicle who is facilitating emergency or police services to the caller’s location, looking up details of the caller’s situation online, and making assisting phone calls. It’s a real talent, and the tens of thousands of successful conversations attributed to the call center are validation of the team’s efforts.

Still, the hotline responders, about 25% of whom are veterans themselves, occasionally can’t help but wonder if they did their best when a call doesn’t end as positively as they hoped. Nobody can detach completely. These moments are another instance when the supervisors offer support and ensure they did their best.

Director Ellen Goosenberg Kent told HBO, “the workers at the Crisis Line understand that they’re not in a position to do therapy themselves, and they’re not responsible for what the veteran ultimately chooses to do or for the failures of the system in responding to a veteran’s needs. They achieve a level of loving detachment that is rare.”