Responding to suicidal calls: does trait anxiety hinder or help?

To see if trait anxiety and suicidality interfered with the ability to respond to suicidal crisis calls, 279 undergraduates completed measures of trait anxiety and suicidality in the past week, and the revised Suicide Intervention Response Inventory (SIRI-2). Unexpectedly, trait anxiety (but not suicidality) correlated with better SIRI-2 scores. In addition, students scored significantly more like the experts on the SIRI-2 if they were European-American, were relatively older, had completed a crisis intervention course, had undergone psychotherapy, or had ever been suicidal in their lives. Trait anxiety does not hinder, and may even help, in responding to a suicidal phone call.