Spectrum: From A-Z by Shagufta Iqbal
I do not want to smoke
The Power of Listening: self-injury support
A travelling exhibition previewed at Glenside Hospital Museum
“Warm and gentle support for women who want to be heard”: voices of the Bristol Crisis Service for Women.
The telephone helpline set up by the Bristol Crisis Service for Women in 1988 is still going today.
The Bristol Crisis Service for Women started life as a feminist collective that offered peer support to women struggling to cope with mental ill health, trauma and distress. It grew out of the Bristol Women and Mental Health Network, set up by women who regarded themselves as survivors rather than beneficiaries of psychiatric treatment, and became a separate group in April 1986. The 1980s was a time of feminist action around a range of issues, when it seemed as if women organising together could take on anything. The founders of Bristol Crisis Service for Women had experience of self-injury and knew how little help and support there was for women like them, so they took action – opening a telephone helpline in January 1988, run from the back of a charity shop in Easton.
It’s a space where women struggling with self-injury can talk anonymously about their lives to other women. A peer support service, the phoneline is staffed by volunteers, many of whom have personal experience of self-injury. Helpline volunteers do not give advice or tell callers to stop using self-injury. They understand that self-injury is a way that callers cope with unimaginable distress and offer to be with them in their pain for the duration of the call.
Since 2008, the phone helpline has run alongside text, email and webchat support services and volunteers have expanded their skills to respond on these very different media. Initially targeted at women under 25, these support services are now open to all and have proved a vital alternative for women who find it hard to speak in person.
Helpline shifts were held late on weekend nights and the office was cold and dimly lit, so volunteers would use blankets to keep warm and turn on a light to illuminate their desk. They made notes about the content of the calls as they went along, so a record of the issues raised could be kept.
A facsimile volunteer desk with a phone is set up, so visitors can pick up the receiver to hear volunteers and staff from Bristol Crisis Service for Women, now called Self Injury Support, talk about their experiences on the helpline and more.
Find out more about the history of Bristol Crisis for Women at womenlisteningtowomen.org.uk
Find Self Injury Support at selfinjurysupport.org.uk
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