alt Hacker NewsI don't think it's obvious that routing to a human is infeasible. I'm sure many local authorities, health agencies, and non-profits would be okay being routed to. Additionally, I'm sure many of the users are the same week over week, so giving them long term care would reduce the total volume. Finally, there is a long gap between psychosis and emotional dependence, so there could be some triage to make sure those most in need have human intervention.
None of them are resourced enough (globally) to do this.
Safety is my area, and I interact with help lines and safety networks. Most of the time they are getting crushed and are underfunded. Offloading the work to them is hard and it requires investment in staffing, people, and organization.
It’s currently cheaper to do some amount of donation and support to such orgs, and bury the issue, than it is to actually deliver / invest in the degree of support needed.
These are also long tail problems, so solutions for a case can take years. For example if you are a woman in Pakistan who has been a victim of revenge porn, you are going to be spending a good chunk of your life trying to get those images/videos taken down from sites that are not based in Pakistan.
This is only an example of the types of problems that these helplines will have to triage. There will definitely be cases that can be resolved with a single call.
There isn’t any money in it, and it is seen as support work.