On average, eight people considering taking their own lives call CONTACT Lancaster Helpline's suicide hotline each day.

That's about 250 calls per month and 3,000 calls per year.

When these distraught callers dial 1 (800) 273-TALK, they speak to volunteers specially trained to deal with people thinking about killing themselves.

"Sometimes people go through situations that they think they just can't handle," said Jody Anderson, director of CONTACT Lancaster Helpline. "If someone is calling the hotline, they are reaching out, so they typically want help. They don't really want to kill themselves.

"Our volunteers are trained to talk to them and try to convince them to be safe until they can speak to their doctor or therapist."

But how helpful in preventing suicide is a hotline volunteer?

Anderson said she doesn't know of any instances in Lancaster County in which someone called the hotline and then later committed suicide.

But no one has ever studied the effectiveness of suicide-prevention training.

Until now.

CONTACT Lancaster Helpline, which is an arm of Community Action Program of Lancaster County, is one of 18 crisis call centers invited to participate in a study being conducted by Columbia University, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.

Over the next two years, researchers will evaluate the effectiveness of a particular suicide-prevention training program by randomly listening in on calls to the Helpline — researchers will not be able to communicate with either party during calls — and then contacting callers afterward to interview them about their experience with the call-center volunteers.

The training program is called Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training, and all 83 volunteers at CONTACT Lancaster Helpline will be required to go through it.

And because the training program is going to be offered in Lancaster County anyway, Anderson said her organization has decided to open admission up to the public, free of charge.

Normally, the two-day training program costs $300.

"I would think this would be a good experience for school counselors, people who work in churches, hospital staff — anybody who encounters people dealing with problems," she said.

What everyone who completes the training program will learn, Anderson said, is how to recognize when someone might be thinking of suicide, how to talk to those people about their problems and what to do when they think someone might kill themselves, despite their intervention efforts.

The training session that's open to the public is scheduled for 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on Sept. 20 and noon to 6 p.m. on Sept. 21 at Eden Resort. People must attend both days to complete the program.

From 9 a.m. to noon on Oct. 7, CONTACT Lancaster Helpline will host a separate, free program on suicide awareness at Eden Resort.

Anyone interested in participating in either event should call Anderson at 299-7388, extension 3123.

E-mail: preilly@lnpnews.com