Residents' awareness and attitude to crisis hotline in Shenzhen City

Objective: To study residents' awareness,methods of information acquiring and attitude to crisis hotline in Shenzhen City.Methods: Seven political regions of streets from 3 districts were sampled by stratified random method.Subjects who were 14 years or older and willing to participate in the study,were interviewed with the self-designed questionnaire to collect the information about social demographic data,awareness of the hotline,ways to get hotline information,as well as their attitude and related reasons to utilize the hotline services.Results: Totally 1033 residents were interviewed,and 503(48.7%,503/1033) knew crisis hotline,but only 123(11.9%,123/1033) knew specific crisis hotlines or the phone numbers.The ways to get hotline information were mainly from TV programs,told by other people,and internet and radio programs.Among the 503 subjects who knew any crisis hotline,235(46.7%,235/503) would utilize the hotline services when they were in crisis.The main reason to utilize the services was I could get help immediately,and the main reason for not using the services was I do not need such kind of the help.Conclusion: In this study,less than half residents know hotlines,and less than half of residents who know hotlines are willing to utilize the hotline services.Residents' understanding and confidence to crisis hotlines should be improved.