For reasons I will not go into here, I recently was researching suicide hotline chatrooms online. Many people don't like to use the telephone, or can't for this reason or that and so a 'chat' seemed the next best option.
I was surprised at the lack of options
The first chat i attempted to enter refused me as it is only for Americans. It required me to enter a zip code, i entered a USA zip code, and then promptly refused me after having noticed my IP address was not USA based. It provided a link for 'international help' which was a dead link.
The second chat I attempted to enter told me there were 13 people in front of me and that the expected wait time was 3 hours. I left that promptly as well.
The next chat room asked me to complete a long document detailing my life history, and essentially every personal detail about myself before being attempted to connect to someone to talk to. I left.
Chat rooms are easy, 1 on 1 chats are easy, you can buy scripts online and host them yourself, even with encryption on shared hosting. Why are the options so bad? This is a problem that has existed since the beginning of time, how have we not found a more succinct solution to helping those in need?
Please for anybody with the capability to do so, take this as a message. Please build a better, faster, easier solution for people that need to talk, for those that are depressed and are considering things such as suicide. Make it as approachable and easy as possible. You could say 1-10's-100's or even millions of lives.
I'd develop it myself but do not have the means to properly promote it or fund it's operation.