The 13-year-old girl was planning to hang herself with sheets in her bedroom while her family ate dinner downstairs. She said she was being bullied at school and was battling her weight, and she hinted that she might be gay. One by one, Steve LeVert talked the girl through each of her issues and ultimately persuaded her not to kill herself. The girl promised that she would talk to her mother and would call back on the suicide hotline if she needed more help. That was the first call LeVert ever took as a hotline volunteer, 18 months ago.

The 13-year-old girl was planning to hang herself with sheets in her bedroom while her family ate dinner downstairs. She said she was being bullied at school and was battling her weight, and she hinted that she might be gay.

One by one, Steve LeVert talked the girl through each of her issues and ultimately persuaded her not to kill herself. The girl promised that she would talk to her mother and would call back on the suicide hotline if she needed more help.

That was the first call LeVert ever took as a hotline volunteer, 18 months ago.

"You do your best to get them out of that moment," said LeVert, 51, a health-club manager in Columbus."You help them see that there is hope. But one of the sad parts for us working the phones is that you rarely get to know how it ends. I still wonder how the 13-year-old girl is doing."

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Doctors, psychologists, counselors, social workers and others connected to the mental-health system are working to reduce suicide rates that continue to rise nationwide and in Ohio. The nation's largest suicide-prevention organization has set a goal to reduce the annual suicide rate by 20 percent over the next 10 years.

But it's volunteers such as LeVert who are on the front lines of a crisis that has taken 20,000 people in Ohio since 2000. Those volunteers often are the difference between people receiving the help they need or sliding back into despair.

They are the people who persuade a suicidal caller, who might be distraught over a relationship breakup or a job loss, to put down the gun or the pills. They are the caring voice in the night for those suffering from depression. They talk to someone with bipolar disorder because relatives and friends are no longer willing to deal with the caller. They comfort the lonely.

There are 139 volunteers who work for the Suicide Prevention Services Crisis Hotline on North High Street in the University District. The hotline is operated by North Central Mental Health Services and funded by the ADAMH Board of Franklin County.

The line is staffed every hour, 365 days a year. Calls funnel to the center from anyone who calls the direct local line, a special line for teens, or the national suicide prevention Lifeline from the 614 or 740 area codes. That includes cellphone calls from people across the country who still use those area codes.

Last year, the hotline received about 9,300 calls. About 60 percent were classified as "crisis" calls; of those, more than half involved someone expressing thoughts of suicide and 6 percent were considered moderate to high risk, in which the police, paramedics or other emergency services might have been called to intervene.

Volunteers range in age from Ohio State students to retirees in their 80s. They come from diverse professional and cultural backgrounds. But there are not enough.

Hotline coordinators say they need more people to join their next training session, which begins in late September. Each volunteer must go through 13 three-hour sessions that focus on scenarios they might encounter while working three-hour or six-hour shifts each week.

"We need more good listeners," said Rick Baumann, assistant coordinator for North Central's suicide services and the hotline.

"Knowing that you helped empower someone who is suicidal to make the right decision is a feeling that people can't find elsewhere," Baumann said. In the calls, "we find out what their reason is for wanting to die and eliminate that. And find out their reason for living and reinforce that."

Saving more lives

A federal report released in the spring showed a 24 percent increase in suicides in the country between 1999 and 2014. Suicides among youths rose both nationally and in Ohio, where suicide remains the second-leading cause of death among people 10 to 24 years old.

The Dispatch series "Silent Suffering," published in November and available online at Dispatch.com/suicide, examined the effects of this public-health crisis, which was spawned in part by a broken mental-health system.

To help combat those alarming numbers, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention is launching the next phase of its Project 2025. The project started last year with the goal of reducing the annual suicide rate by 20 percent over a decade. The foundation is organizing a large-scale effort, estimating that it could save nearly 20,000 lives in 10 years.

The three critical areas of the plan:

Educating the gun industry and gun owners about research showing that the risk of suicide is reduced by about 60 percent if someone deemed suicidal is separated from weapons. More people take their lives with guns than by any other method. Helping large health-care systems better identify patients who are suicide risks during primary-care visits, providing those patients with short-term intervention and making sure that they get effective follow-up care. Identifying people at risk for suicide through mental-health screenings in emergency departments, providing them with short-term intervention and ensuring that they receive follow-up care.

"For years, there has been a gap between what the research tells us works in preventing suicide and what actually happens in health-care settings and communities across the country," said foundation CEO Robert Gebbia. "This will require an all-out effort from leaders across all industry sectors and communities nationwide. Together, we will save thousands of lives."

Always there

The man on the other end of the suicide hotline was upset. He was struggling with mental-health problems and felt anxious about not knowing what to get his wife for her birthday.

He had been suicidal in the past, but this time he wasn't there yet. Shannon Cogan, a 20-year-old volunteer with the hotline, calmly talked through each of his issues and encouraged him to buy a gift for his wife.

"It's a weird mixture of scariness and fulfillment taking the calls," said Cogan, a junior psychology major at Ohio State University who has volunteered for about 18 months. "Most people just want someone to talk with."

Usually, two volunteers work in a small room with two coffee pots, a couch to relax on between calls, an old microwave and whatever bowl of snacks is left behind by the previous shift. Sometimes, a third person helps. If a call comes in when all three lines are occupied, it is directed to a person who is on call from home.

Some volunteers have worked the phones for about 100 hours and others, such as Kay Ball, have volunteered for almost 5,000 hours. The average call lasts 23 minutes. Callers include about 25 "regulars" who aren't necessarily suicidal but just need someone to talk with about their issues or a problem.

On this day, Ball, an 81-year-old retiree, was Cogan's partner. In three hours, she was hung up on twice, received one obscene call, talked to two of the regulars and took two calls in which people needed help. In one of those, she helped a battered woman connect with a domestic-violence organization, and in the other, she encouraged a suicidal woman who had recently broken up with a boyfriend.

It was a typical shift for Ball, who has taken memorable calls over the years. Once, a woman called from a phone booth and said, "I am going to shoot the Statue of Liberty." She was referring to a man dressed as the Statue of Liberty who worked for Liberty Tax Service on Karl Road. Ball stalled the woman long enough for police to arrive, and no one was harmed.

The next day, Ball drove past the man - who never knew his life had been threatened.

"You get just about every kind of call you can imagine," she said. "Lots of people say they just want to find a way to help people. Well, here is their chance."

mwagner@dispatch.com

@MikeWagner48