Our main activity is providing support to people experiencing suicidal thinking or emotional crisis through our hotline, which is available 24 hours a day and 7 days per week and is a free call from all major mobile operators in Ukraine, the hotline number is 7333. Since the hotline began operating on October of 2019 Lifeline Ukraine has helped callers in distress well over 30,000 times. Since the full invasion of Ukraine demand for our support has surged almost three times.
For people who prefer to write rather than speak, we also provide support through chat. People in need can access us through the chat function on our website, through Facebook Messenger, or through Telegram.
Beginning in 2021, Lifeline Ukraine began to leverage our expertise in suicide prevention by offering to conduct training seminars for organisations, groups, or companies. Although all of our seminars have a focus on suicide prevention, we have developed a range of seminars with slightly different focuses that people can choose from. In addition to going into organisations by invitation, we also offer webinars that are open to anyone to attend, which are advertised through our social media pages.
Under development right now, Lifeline Ukraine will soon also have an online self-paced learning tool so that anyone who has an interest in learning how to identify signs of suicidal ideation and how to have a discussion with a person experiencing such thoughts. The course consists of instruction, some golden rules of suicide prevention, and features three animated scenarios showing how such supportive conversations can unfold. Similar online courses have proven to be very popular in the UK and in north America and course participants will receive a certificate on completion, helping to further promote this tool and make suicide awareness more widespread throughout the country with a goal to help reduce national suicide rates.