Americans have suffered a cascade of instability, illness, death, job loss, and school closures this year. The added stressors could make for a rough holiday season. Crisis hotlines and text apps that counsel people under acute duress are optimistic that this season may be less chaotic than usual, as families have settled into being homebound. But just in case there are issues, crisis lines are staffing up. Contrary to popular belief, the holidays are relatively quiet for crisis lines. Calls dwindle and organizations that respond to crisis lines offer volunteers a much-needed break. However, because this year has been unusually difficult, crisis lines will keep staffing up to prepare for a possible rise in calls and texts. Because of the rising number of COVID-19 cases, some people are opting to spend the holidays alone instead of spending it with friends and family. People are already feeling more anxious and depressed than normal. Isolation could make that worse. “Volume is up even pre-holiday. It’s up from last year. It’s consistent with what we get in the spring, which is our highest volume during the year. So, we’re going into this with a different baseline,” says Beverly Marquez, CEO of Rocky Mountain Crisis Partners, an organization that supports crisis lines in Colorado. While official reports of child abuse have dropped substantially this year, calls to crisis hotlines have increased . Meanwhile, in September, the New England Journal of Medicine published a perspective that called intimate partner violence a “pandemic within the pandemic.” The report noted that in some regions reports of domestic abuse dropped 50% below the usual—not because incidents were dropping, but because people confined at home have not been able to safely reach out for help.
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Crisis hotlines are bracing for the COVID-19 holiday season