So how does this chat thing work, anyhow? – Part II

There are many more shining qualities in the mind of man, but there is none so useful as discretion…

- Joseph Addison

“Wait, this is all anonymous, right?”

So I will try to answer that question but as completely as possible because, quite honestly, I don’t want to scare anyone off if they have absolutely no reason to be afraid.

As we went over in the post about anonymity a few weeks ago, “anonymous” probably isn’t the right word for it. When someone logs into the chat here, what we get is the name, city and age they put into the little pre-chat survey… our chat program also takes a wild stab at guessing what country you’re from based on your IP address, but it’s often wrong. Right off the start, we have no way of knowing 100% if that’s your real name, real age or real city, and most of those things aren’t actually important. If you need to talk about how shitty things are at home, does it really matter whether your legal name is John, Karen or Ezekiel?

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“Wait wait… what if I tell you something serious?”

Whatever you discuss with the volunteers on YouthInBC.com is confidential.

That means the only people that know about it are you and the people who work on YouthInBC.com. If there was only one of us, I’d say “the person who you chatted with”, but since there are a pile of volunteers and staff here, we may end up discussing some things internally, like if we’re looking for the right referral for you or if you told us you’ll be back in two hours but you don’t want to have to tell your whole story over again. We may also discuss chats for training and quality assurance purposes, as well as for academic research into what’s working best (so that we can learn to suck less).

The legal limit of that confidentiality is if the person we’re speaking to is unable or unwilling to act to ensure their own or someone else’s safety, we may report the situation to the appropriate party. This is only the case if someone’s life is at risk, and we’d much much much rather work with you, the chatter, so we’ll often try to find a solution that you also agree with.

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“Whoa… ‘someone’s life is at risk?’ That could be anything! Isn’t my life at risk if I smoke?!”

Har har, yes, I get that it’s subjective. Let me crystal clear about this:

If we think someone will die unless we act, then we will probably call 911 and ask them to follow the IP to its source. Without this step, it is fair to say we won’t know your address or phone number unless you told it to us.

If we think you or someone else will be in serious danger, we reserve the right to do so, but it will definitely depend on the situation. If the danger is that they’ll start smoking, then it’s safe to say no… if the danger is that they’ll be maimed and disfigured but will still alive, then we will probably call. Anything between those two will depend.

But unless that happens, we won’t know anything more about you than any dull normal could figure out, which generally amounts to a broad geographical area (e.g. the Greater Vancouver area) and what company you get your internet from.

So long as there’s no imminent danger to a life, if you tell us that you cut … do drugs… sleep with strangers… question your sexuality… cheat on your exams… then you’ll likely remain as good as anonymous to us.

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“So if I’m thinking about killing myself, you guys are going to call the police?”

Well, let me put it this way: We’re part of the BC Crisis Centre. The Crisis Centre is accredited to the highest standards of the American Association of Suicidology. Some of the same volunteers that you talk to on YIBC also answer when someone (in BC) calls 1-800-SUICIDE.  The chat has been around since 2004 or so, but the Centre has been “in the business” for about 40 years. We’re not really the panicky type.

We also understand that having a safe space to talk about suicide is really important. If we called the cops every time someone brought up suicide, I think we’d run out of callers. If suicide is what’s on your mind and you need to talk about it, know that we won’t tell you you’re wrong for feeling that way, and if there’s a way to help you work through your feelings, we’ll be trying our best to find it. There are many other ways to deal with suicide than just calling the police.