Stress Management Strategies of Volunteers in an Anonymous Chat-Based Sexual Assault Hotline

Volunteers have long been essential to the operation of rape crisis services, where they provide advocacy, emotional support, information, and referrals to survivors and their loved ones. While many volunteers describe their experiences as deeply meaningful, supporting survivors of sexual assault also poses significant challenges. Despite the growing use of chat-based hotlines to support sexual assault survivors, research on the experiences of hotline volunteers remains limited. This qualitative study explored how volunteers at Kolmila, an anonymous, Israeli chat-based hotline for survivors of sexual trauma, navigated and managed the stress inherent in their volunteer roles. Based on a qualitative-phenomenological approach to the thematic analysis of 31 in-depth interviews, three primary stress management strategies emerged: (a) leveraging institutional and semi-institutional resources, (b) employing separation and disconnection techniques, and (c) blending personal and professional boundaries. The complexity of the volunteers' work stems from their need to balance the emotional burden of addressing sexual trauma with the unique challenges of anonymized, text-based communication. This intersection amplifies the difficulty of the work, as the absence of visual or verbal cues can intensify the distressing nature of the interactions. The findings are discussed in terms of the Job Demands-Resources Theory, emphasizing how the balance between job demands and available resources impacts volunteer resilience and well-being. Practical implications highlight the urgent need for comprehensive training and continuous support systems that can equip volunteers with effective coping strategies and that ensure a personalized balance of resources. Implementing such a framework requires substantial funding, which government agencies should prioritize as part of their responsibility to address the pressing societal problem of sexual violence.