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Caltrain Partners with Crisis Text Line

Over the course of text conversations, sometimes 45 to 60 minutes long, counselors assess the person’s risk for suicide; provide a space for venting and validation; and help craft a plan on how the person can stay safe that day.

(TNS) -- The night before Gunn High School graduate Sarah Marie Longyear died by suicide in April on the Caltrain tracks in Palo Alto, Calif., she was texting friends.

“She was texting friends but they didn’t know what to do,” said her mother, Sally Longyear.

Longyear said the 19-year-old Washington University student tried hard to hide her mental illness in public, but she was comfortable confiding in friends and family through texts.

Longyear spoke Wednesday at a news conference about a partnership effort between Caltrain and Crisis Text Line to connect those contemplating suicide with trained crisis counselors.

Caltrain will start promoting the service on Monday with fliers aboard trains and at stations.

Crisis Text Line, launched in 2013, is already available to “anyone, anytime, anywhere,” said Mary Gloner, executive director of Project Safety Net, another Crisis Text Line partner.

Through Crisis Text Line, 2,400 volunteer counselors nationwide provide crisis help purely via text messaging. The service is free, confidential and available 24/7.

Anyone who texts the word, “BAY,” to 741741 will receive an automated message asking them, “What’s on your mind?”

The counselors triage the text messages based on the person’s response.

Phrases such as “I want to die” or “I feel suicidal” are prioritized and the person will be matched with a counselor, on average, within 1.8 minutes, according to Libby Craig, the Bay Area director for Crisis Text Line.

Craig said she graduated from Gunn in 2009, the school year in which there were five teen suicides in Palo Alto. Around the same time, she lost her 17-year-old cousin to suicide.

She hopes that with Crisis Text Line everyone will know “help is just a text away.”

Over the course of text conversations, sometimes 45 to 60 minutes long, counselors assess the person’s risk for suicide; provide a space for venting and validation; and help craft a plan on how the person can stay safe that day.

About 10 times a day, a text conversation triggers emergency services where a counselor has to notify police, Craig said.

Mark Simon, Caltrain’s chief of staff, urged: “Don’t struggle in silence, don’t suffer alone… There are trained professionals on the other end of this text line.”

Depression, stress, anxiety and suicide are mental health issues that affect young adults nationwide, not just at Paly or Gunn, Sally Longyear said.

“Crisis Text Line will not help every person, but if it can save just one life, someone like Sarah, the world will have one more bright light,” she added.

©2016 the Palo Alto Daily News (Menlo Park, Calif.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.