Ahead of September 10, World Suicide Prevention Day, Deccan Herald's Metrolife spoke with the crisis helplines that Bengaluru turns to when distress becomes unbearable. The picture that emerged from their call logs is consistent across services: relationship problems, academic pressure, and job-related distress are the concerns people call about most.
Cadabam's 24/7 suicide prevention and crisis helpline was among the services featured.
What the call volumes show
Dr Anitha Bharathan, Consultant Clinical Psychologist at Cadabam's Hospitals, who manages the helpline, told the publication that it handled over 17,000 calls between June and September 2025. Nearly 8,000 of those were suicide-related.
Running since 2017 and staffed by 10 to 12 trained mental health professionals, the service receives 4,500 to 5,000 calls a month. "Around 60-70% are suicide-related or distress calls," Dr Anitha said.
Callers range in age from 13 to 80, but the majority are adolescents and young adults — most often struggling with anxiety, depression, toxic relationships, addiction, and trauma.
Relationships are the common thread
The pattern holds across the city's helplines. Arpita Foundation, which has handled over 30,000 calls since 2019, reports that 60-70% of its callers raise relationship problems — everything from teenage breakups to marital discord, frequently tied to unresolved emotional baggage. Sahai, run by the Medico Pastoral Association for 22 years, logged 111 relationship-related calls out of 718 in the year to June 2025, alongside 240 about mental health concerns and 45 about job stress.
What these numbers make visible is something clinicians see daily: relationship distress is rarely "just" a relationship problem. A breakup, a strained marriage, or a family conflict often sits on top of existing anxiety or depression, and it is frequently the moment that pushes someone to pick up the phone.
How a crisis call is handled
Counsellors on the Cadabam's helpline use crisis de-escalation techniques — including guided deep breathing — to stabilise a caller in the moment. Critically, the work does not end when the call does. The team follows up three to four times over the ten days after a crisis call, because the period immediately following an acute episode is when continued contact matters most.
That follow-up structure is echoed by the other helplines featured, several of which encourage callers to return and see roughly a quarter of them do.
Reaching out is the first step
A helpline call is often someone's first contact with mental health support, and for many it is enough to get through the night. For those who need more, structured counselling offers a space to work through the patterns underneath the crisis — communication breakdowns, attachment difficulties, unresolved grief — rather than only the emergency itself.
That continuum — from a first crisis call through to structured therapy — reflects how Neha Cadabam, Senior Psychologist and Executive Director at Cadabam's Hospitals, has positioned the organisation's work: mental healthcare that meets people at the point of distress and stays with them well past it, rather than treating the emergency as the whole of the care.
If you or someone you know is struggling, Cadabam's Hospitals' crisis helpline is available 24x7 on +91 97414 76476. Calls are confidential, and trained professionals are on the line at every hour.