iCALL’s ReYou is a professionally run suicide prevention chat line for youth, that aims to provide psychosocial support to youth (i.e. individuals between 18-24 years of age) in distress, especially those in crisis situations. The service is available from Monday to Friday, 9 am to 9 pm. Upon accessing the service, our counsellors will respond to your chat in real-time and provide you with support. These counselors are trained mental health professionals who are equipped to address different youth mental health concerns, including those related to suicidal ideation and self-harm. You can chat with us about anything that's on your mind - no matter how overwhelming it may be, we are here to listen. You can chat with us by clicking here.

Any youth (i.e. an individual between 18 - 24 years of age) experiencing distress, or thoughts of harming themselves can access iCALL’s ReYou to receive psychosocial support. Our trained chat counsellors are here to listen and support you through difficulties you may be facing.

The chat-line provides professional counselling for youth mental health concerns, especially crises. The trained counsellors will listen to you, familiarise you with the counselling process and provide suitable intervention strategies that can help you improve your well-being and reduce your distress. In addition to this, to get the psychosocial support you need, the counsellors will also provide suitable referrals to doctors, NGOs, etc. from our exhaustive referral database. Additional linkages will be available through iCALL’s other services such as the iCALL helpline and email services, and self-help resources (available on the website and application).

iCALL’s ReYou is a technology-assisted service however, iCALL is based in Mumbai. We also provide technology-assisted services through other modalities such as helpline (9152987821), and email (icall@tiss.edu). Please feel free to reach us via any modality which seems more convenient for you.

Our chat-line service is active from 9.00 am to 9.00 pm from Monday to Friday.

Yes, ReYou, iCALL’s chat-line is free of cost.

Our counsellors are trained mental health professionals who have completed a Master’s degree in Psychology. The counsellors undergo continued supervision and are trained to address a variety of youth mental health concerns, including crisis concerns.

ReYou is a safe space for you to express any of your concerns. Our counsellors will listen to your distress patiently without any judgement. The collaborative therapeutic setup will allow the client to build rapport and trust, express psychosocial issues, identify and help the client come up with a plan to stay safe.

Yes, even if you have previously used the chat service, you can access it again anytime you are distressed or in a crisis situation. Please keep in mind that if you decide to use the service again, you will need to send a message so that a counsellor can be connected to you. However, kindly note that the chat-line should not be considered a substitute or replacement for long-term therapeutic treatment.

Absolutely! There is a conscious and collective effort made at iCALL to address the psychosocial needs of individuals from the LGBTQAI+ community and other marginalised communities. iCALL has undertaken efforts to equip counsellors with skills to adequately respond to concerns of LGBTQAI+ and other marginalised communities.

iCALL does not provide face-to-face counselling services. Our service modalities include chat, helpline, and email. We do, however, have a comprehensive crowdsourced list that consists of details of professionals' face-to-face counselling, based on the nationwide crowdsourced list of services compiled by iCALL.

Yes, you can reach us at our helpline number 9152987821, or send an email to icall@tiss.edu. Services through these modalities are provided for various mental health and psychosocial issues like stress, difficult emotions, academic concerns, relationship issues, and self-image-related concerns. Counselors on the helpline and email services are also equipped to deal with the crisis situations like violence, non-suicidal self-injury, and suicidal ideation.

A trained counsellor responds to your concerns and provides you with support in real-time. There is no such thing as a "standard" crisis, or a "standard" strategy to assist someone through a crisis. Thus, based on your expressed needs and concerns, the counsellor responds in real-time to provide psychosocial support.

At present, our chat service is available in English.

The system has been designed in such a way that the counsellor will be able to share multimedia (PDFs, images, videos, audio, and links) with the client. However, due to the structure of the system, the ability to share any multimedia is restricted to the counsellors only.

The ONLY time we contact parents or anybody else, such as a trusted adult, is when there is a threat to the client’s or someone else’s safety. Suicidal or self-harming ideas do not, by themselves, justify involving a parent, first responder, or anybody else. We will however take this step if the counsellor is concerned about your safety. If the counsellor believes that contacting someone else will facilitate keeping you safe, then this last resort will be engaged. We will definitely involve you in this process and inform you prior to engaging someone you trust. This is clearly a last resort, and the engagement is neither our intention nor our hope. YOU are our first priority, and keeping our conversation confidential is extremely important to us.

We'll go over the next steps and an overall plan at the end of a conversation to help you feel content and comfortable as you go about your day or night. You'll also be asked to score the "helpfulness" of your chat talk at the conclusion of your session. This feedback is extremely useful in determining how we're performing and where we can improve.

Based on the established assessment by the counselor and supervisor, if the client accessing the service is at a higher risk (such as at high risk for considering suicide or self-harming), our first move is to stabilize the client and then try to work with the client to form a plan that ensures their safety. If a client cannot ensure their own safety, steps will be taken for a trusted person or emergency services to be notified that will be in a better position to offer assistance and ensure the client's safety.

Whenever you need help or are in a crisis, you can reach out to us and a trained professional will respond to you. We can't guarantee that you'll get the same counsellor the next time because of work schedules and unpredictable demands. However, all past interactions will be available to the counsellor you contact, so you won't have to explain your entire issue again.

Yes, absolutely. Please feel free to vent and share whatever you would like to. This is a safe space for you to do that.

If you feel concerned about someone/a loved one, you can chat with us. We would be here to support you in reducing your distress and worry.

Yes, if someone is concerned about you being in distress, they can reach out to us. We would support them so that they can manage their distress. However, we would also encourage you to reach out to us for support since the process of counselling aims at empowering you.

The goal of counselling is to work with you to help you make decisions and find solutions instead of giving you advice. Counselling is a collaborative process where we both will discuss your distress, set the goals for your well-being, and come up with strategies that will help you manage/navigate through your distress. This process of counselling aims at empowering the client to find solutions for himself/herself and follow them through.

You can share anything with the counsellor that you are comfortable with. Everything that you share with the counsellor remains confidential between you and the chat counsellors at iCALL.

We take clients’ confidentiality very seriously. Your conversations with the chat-line are completely confidential and secure. The counsellors have access to the information shared by you and that information stays confidential unless sharing it with emergency services is absolutely necessary for your safety. You can also check our privacy policy.

As you reach out to the chat service for psychosocial support, we keep a record of your chat conversations with the counsellors. This helps us to continue the conversation if you choose to use the services again so that you do not have to tell us about your concerns from the beginning. These records are not shared with any third parties.

You will be asked for some personal details like your age, phone number, gender, and location (i.e. the state you belong to). These are essential so that our counsellors are aware of the age category the client belongs to, and can also assist in continuing the conversation if you choose to use the services again. This information helps us refine the nature of support provided, our outreach, and our services.

We may collect personal information about you, but it won't be disclosed to any third parties. We rigorously safeguard your data using several techniques. We use the collected information to operate and improve the services, provide support, fulfill your requests and for research purposes so that we can improve outcomes for people in crisis.

As a part of iCALL’s policies, iCALL will have access to data mandatory for accessing the services and a summary of the sessions. This data will be used for documentation, quality assurance and research, and contribute to the best practices for technology-assisted services. For research purposes, the data obtained will be completely anonymized (i.e., without any personally identifying details) and de-identified prior to use. This will ensure that none of the data is linked back to you/any one person. You may write to us at icall.zoomcares@gmail.com to restrict access and opt out of your data for research purposes.