In 1999, the Society opened a telephone helpline also known as a hotline or open line. This service is an important and widely used community support service. In essence, the service is simple and accessible, designed for people seeking an attentive, sympathetic ear as well as advice on various issues.

The service is especially suitable for MS patients who face problems related to accessibility, distance and inability to move around and reach help centers.

 In the late 1970s, various organizations began to use telephone and then Internet helpline services in order to provide care and support services.

 For this purpose, organizations recruited laypeople who that underwent instruction and received ongoing professional training.

 Over the past six decades, these helplines have been a unique source of support and have become an integral part of the network of community services that many institutions and associations provide.

It should be noted that most of these types of support services are based on people who are not professionals. (For example: ERAN, which has been operating as a telephone service since 2003, the Cancer Association that provides a telephone support service named Telemedia, the Parkinson Association that also provides telephone support, SHIL – Citizen advice service, and dozens of other organizations and institutions).

For over 20 years the Society has been trying to recruit volunteers that will be trained to work on our telephone helpline / hotline, but unfortunately, despite many attempts, the volunteers were unable to provide all the information that MS patients need. The cost of training volunteers and addressing the needs of the volunteer groups was not practical or feasible for the Society. The turnover and management of the volunteers proved to be ineffective, and after examining all the parameters it was decided that the hotline should be run by paid respondents.

Telephone helpline – A hotline in the field of Multiple Sclerosis is based on the idea of ​​an available and accessible service for people with a chronic illness suffering from various disabilities.

The effectiveness of the service lies, among other things, in its being simple and non-intimidating. The hotline serves as a communication channel that is simple and available for contacting a community human resource – the Israel Multiple Sclerosis Association – that understands the caller and is aware of his or her needs.

Analysis of the interactions reveals the unique processes that take place during the telephone conversation and evaluates their contribution to the mental well-being of the callers. It appears that talking to the hotline responders over this personal telephone conversation channel succeeds in creating an intimate and supportive interpersonal environment for the callers, devoid of judgment and criticism. This environment encourages callers to share the deepest and most personal aspects of their lives with the hotline responders.

In these conversations, many MS patients express their need to conceal from people in their immediate and more distant vicinity their true condition and the feeling of social alienation which does not allow them to experience an emotional connection to the human world around them, leading them to an acute sense of loneliness. It appears that in these phone call they feel that they can really open up and are free from restraints which bind them in their daily interactions with their social environment, and even with the professionals who care for them. Literature provides research evidence that personal exposure of inner experiences may have an emotionally liberating effect and reduce feelings of alienation and loneliness.

Interpersonal communication over the telephone has a number of characteristics that may contribute to its appeal to MS patients seeking assistance.

These benefits can be especially helpful to those people who are reluctant to seek help from traditional sources where assistance is provided face-to-face. Based on empirical studies and clinical evidence, the professional literature has identified a number of such characteristics:

1. Openness and personal exposure – The telephone platform may overcome inhibitions that exist in face-to-face communication in expressing emotions and sharing personal issues, thereby promoting people’s willingness to be open and expose themselves. This phenomenon is the main characteristic of communication in a telephone environment and is described as follows: “People say and do things in the telephone space that they would not say and do in a world where communication is face-to-face. They are liberated, feel much less restrained and express themselves more openly. The phenomenon was given a special name – “inhibition removal effect”.

The explanation for this phenomenon is that contacting a hotline provides the emotional security needed for personal exposure because it removes the threat of a judgmental response by a person one knows.

2. Accessibility and Availability of Assistance – Contacting a hotline completely overcomes the boundaries of distance and enables provision of help and support to people who cannot ordinarily obtain it due to geographical distance or transport restrictions. Time constraints are also greatly reduced thanks to the availability of telephone communication through the hotline.
3. Convenience – The telephone environment provides the caller with comfortable conditions in the practical and emotional sense. In practice, the caller is exempt from performing activities that involve inconvenience, such as arriving from home to the place of treatment and worrying about one’s external appearance. Emotionally, holding the telephone encounter in the caller’s home (rather than in the therapist’s “fortress”) may give the caller confidence by reducing the sense of inequality inherent in the encounter between a patient and therapist.
4. Use of imagination – the fact that the therapist is not seen and only heard can provoke in the patient a process of projection, in which s/he shapes the image of the therapist according to his or her needs and preferences and maintains communication with the character that suits his / her psychological needs. This aspect is one of the explanations for a phenomenon that is well known with respect to communication in the telephone environment – powerful emotional connections that develop very quickly.

The Hotline service provided by the Israel Multiple Sclerosis Society is operated by:

• A coordinator who is a social worker with an MA in social work, and is the director of the Society’s psychosocial services
• CEO and Patient Service Director
• Hotline responders who have undergone special training and receive ongoing training, that make calls and receive calls from MS patients, family members, professionals, welfare bureaus and more.

The training that hotline responders receive is ongoing and includes use of communication strategies between them and the callers.

The hotline provides responses is on several levels:

• Inclusion, emotional support and empowerment, assistance in giving different meanings to events and strengthening the caller’s ability to deal with situations that seem to him/her to be irresolvable.
• Providing information and advice related to various issues such as: realizing rights, referral to parties in the community, referral for legal advice, writing letters to various parties in the community.

The variety and types of problems raised by the callers cover a very diverse range, which includes problems on the intrapersonal level, problems on the interpersonal level, problems on the practical level and problems such as depression and anxiety.

(In these cases, referral to external parties)

In the field of interpersonal problems, problems include separation, tensions in the family and with friends, social status, parent-child relationships and many complaints about poor self-image as a result of MS which impairs their quality of life.

In the area of ​​parent-child relationships, the issues raised include lack of understanding and inability on the part of the parents or spouses to contain the disease.

Types of problems raised by callers to the hotline:

The Society’s Hotline responders, that are skilled and regularly undergo ongoing training, take the following actions:

• Refer to psychological counseling in the community and / or psychiatrist
• If they identify that urgent or different intervention is needed, they immediately contact the hotline manager and a situation assessment is conducted, often resulting in a referral to the attending neurologist or the treating psychiatrist. Very rarely the district psychiatrist was contacted.
• Working with counselors and / or psychologists in schools.
• If necessary and in accordance with the caller’s wishes, conversations are conducted with the family members by a mediating social worker.
• Hotline responders refer callers to support groups operating in the area where they live.
• Hotline responders refer appropriate callers for advice by a counselor (patients who have been trained to provide responses to other patients)
• Hotline responders refer and organize a consultation meeting with an attorney regarding rights (the Society provides advice by an attorney for over an/one hour free of charge)
• Hotline responders provide information and referral to various parties with regard to aid equipment and devices.
• Hotline responders refer callers with regard to various insurances, such as: life insurance, mortgage, travel insurance. (To agents and companies with whom the Society has reached a special arrangement for MS patients)
• Many callers request help in writing applications to various parties in the community to whom they have applied and have not been answered.
• Two days before the meeting of a support group, they call all members of the group, check their arrival and assist with transportation.
• Calling members of the Society to register them for various activities such as seminars, vacations, summer camps, groups, of course during the conversation other patient needs also arise

Attached are the costs of operating the hotline, signed by a CPA

Image: Unsplash.com – Markus Spiske