Table A2. Characteristics of all studies of frequent callers and repeat callers (N = 27).
| Reference | Frequent callers definition from article | Sample size Country |
Type of study |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apsler and Hoople (1976) | More than one call | 11,703 United States |
Records audit |
| Barmann (1980) | Five times a day for a period of 1 month or longer | 14 United States |
Intervention study |
| Bassilios et al. (2015) | More than one call | Noncallers: n = 8,751; single callers: n = 44; repeat callers: n = 46 Australia |
Helpline questions from a national mental health and wellbeing survey |
| Berman (1990) | No clear definition provided | 1 United States |
Single case study |
| Brockopp et al. (2002) | More than 10 calls in 9 months | Frequent callers: n = 24; nonfrequent callers: n = 378 United States |
Records audit, no comparison with nonfrequent callers |
| Brunet et al. (1994) | More than 10 calls/month | 5 Canada |
Intervention study |
| Burgess et al. (2008) | More than 10 calls/month | The center answered a total of 1,404 calls in the study period. Of these, 439 calls met the inclusion criteria (i.e., not crisis and not short referral), 270 callers agreed to participate and 71 declined participation. The remaining 98 calls were from repeat callers Australia |
Survey of helplines crisis callers |
| De Carli (1988) | Twice a week for at least one month | 9 United States |
Survey of helplines crisis callers |
| Greer (1976) | At least 19 contacts over 2 years | Frequent callers: n = 37; random sample of single-call callers: n = 26 United States |
Survey of helpline callers |
| Hall and Schlosar (1995) | No clear definition provided | 13,510 calls Canada |
Intervention study; no comparisons |
| Haycock (1998) | At least 10 calls over 12 months, very frequent callers at least 50 | Callers chosen from people with 6 or more contacts with a mental health service during 1 year. Compared frequent callers (n = 30) with very frequent callers (n = 10) United States |
Survey of helpline callers who were in contact with a mental health service |
| Hirsch (1981) | No clear definition provided | Listened to 100 calls, no indication how many were frequent callers Canada |
Records audit and clinical impressions from listening to calls |
| Johnson and Barry (1978) | Total number of calls studied (some were more than 10/month) | 100 callers categorized by frequency of calls United States |
Records audit relating overall number of calls to nature of problems |
| Kinzel and Nanson (2000) | Nonapplicable | Nonapplicable Not available |
Literature review on crisis line volunteers’ impressions |
| Lester and Brockopp (1970) | More than 10 calls in 9 months | 24 United States |
Records audit |
| Middleton, Gunn et al. (2016) | ≥20/month Australia |
19 Australia |
Semistructured telephone interviews with frequent callers |
| Middleton et al. (2017) | ≥20/month | 315 Frequent callers: n = 69; repeat callers: n = 162; unique callers: n = 79 |
Survey of helplines crisis callers |
| Middleton, Gunn et al. (2016) | ≥4/month | 789 participants Australia |
Records audit of frequent use of telephone helplines and health service use over time in general practice attendees with depressive symptoms |
| Mishara and Daigle (1997) | Multiple calls/same problem | 617 calls from 263 callers, of which 25% of callers repeatedly called and had a dossier as a “chronic caller” at the center Canada |
Intervention study |
| O’Neill et al. (2019) | Cluster analyses identified two clusters of “prolific” callers: those who call thousands of times and hundreds of times | A total of 3.449 million calls (= 725 calls per 1,000 population), with a cluster of callers who have a pattern of calling thousands of times, generally with calls under 10 minutes, and others who call hundreds of times with longer calls. Ireland |
Records audit of call frequency and duration data |
| Pirkis et al. (2016) | ≥20/month | Nonapplicable Australia |
Review and document audit and survey |
| Sawyer and Jameton (1979) | Multiple calls for same problem | 67 United States |
Records audit |
| Speer (1971) | Listed total calls over 2 months | Found that 17 of 418 callers called 20 or more times over 2 months, no further descriptive data on frequent callers United States |
Records audit |
| Spittal et al. (2015) | 0.667 calls per day in any period from 1 week to 549 days (4.7 in 7 days, 20 in 30 days, etc.) |
N = 98,174 individuals (411,725 calls) n = 75,362 single callers (75,362 calls) n = 22,818 repeat callers (336,365 calls) n = 2,595 frequent callers (247,547 calls) Australia |
Records audit |
| Torop and Torop (1972) | No clear definition provided | Nonapplicable United States |
Intervention study |
| Vivekananda, Bamford et al. (2019) | No clear definition provided | 33 Australia |
Intervention study |
| Vivekananda, Cuppari et al. (2019) | No clear definition provided | Nonapplicable Australia |
Semistructured telephone interviews with 10 senior clinical supervisors at four helplines |