The use of volunteers in a community mental health center emergency and reception service: a comparative study of professional and lay telephone counseling.

A model of volunteer participation in a community mental health center emergency and reception service is presented and tested by comparing the telephone counseling effectiveness of volunteers and community mental health professionals. Experienced and inexperienced volunteers, professionals, and control subjects responded to simulated telephone crisis calls that were tape-recorded and replayed for ratings along seven scales which assessed various dimensions of counseling effectiveness. The results suggested that carefully selected and trained volunteers can function as effectively as professional staff in providing supportive and emergency telephone services for distressed callers and community mental health center clients.