SOS Voz Amiga

The SOS Voz Amiga Association is a Private Institution of Social Solidarity, recognized as a collective person of public utility and who provides emotional support by telephone in acute situations of suffering caused by loneliness, anxiety, depression and suicide risk.

The service is provided by volunteers, citizens of good-will, anonymous, non-professional and unpaid, with selection, adequate training and experience. Appellants enjoy a genuine human relationship, based on listening without judgment.

The support is entirely confidential. What cannot be expressed anywhere else can be said and contained by another human being, who is a volunteer without therapeutic goals but apt for respectful and empathetic listening, without value judgments, warnings or comparisons.

The volunteer is aware that what is essential in this kind of help is knowing how to listen. Listening with attention, respect and understanding. Listen by creating empathy, this is trying to see reality as the other person sees it. Listen, feeling sympathetic with each other. Be an active and supportive interlocutor of the other, ​ keeping you company on your journey and helping you gain confidence in yourself and your self - determination.

Help telephones are closely linked to the problem of suicide prevention. They try to reduce the isolation of people at risk by offering someone who is available to listen. The feelings, often contradictory, wanting to die and wanting to live, not being able to live and not being able to die, can be shared with another person.

It is paradoxically this possibility of establishing a bridge with another person, this revival of feelings of sharing, of solidarity, which sometimes allows to overcome or postpone the acute situation of risk of suicide. One of the most powerful ways to support people in distress, prevent suicide and develop emotional well-being is to understand with respect what others are experiencing and to help them recognize their own resources.

The volunteer accepts the hypothesis that if the meeting happens if the relationship is established, this relationship is helpful. It is the strengths of the help telephone: the volunteer is a stranger, who does not see his face or his reactions; be equal (to the extent that you are not a professional), and not have any possibility of intervention outside the relationship established on the telephone.