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OK2TALK Like Hearing Aid From Shockwave Rider
The OK2TALK.org website is designed around a simple idea: let people who feel isolated and unable to connect with anyone to speak about their problems to a sympathetic ear.
The goal of OK2TALK is to create a community for teens and young adults struggling with mental health problems and encourage them to talk about what they’re experiencing by sharing their personal stories of recovery, tragedy, struggle or hope.
Readers of John Brunner's 1970's classic The Shockwave Rider recall a similar idea. A call to the ten nines gets you an anonymous connection with Hearing Aid:
And talks to a blank though lighted screen. It's a service. Imposing no penances, it's kinder than the confessional. Demanding no fees, it's affordable where psychotherapy is not. Offering no advice, it's better than arguing with that son (or daughter) of a bitch who thinks he/she knows all the answers and goes on and on and on until you want to scream.
The anonymity of the call was protected by a special form of the computer worm idea that was also a Brunner original.
Teens and young adults who suffer from mental illness can feel hopeless and alone. Many don’t know what’s wrong with them but feel like it’s their fault. Those who understand what is happening fear they can’t be helped. Because of the stigma attached to mental illness, it’s often hard for those suffering and their families and friends to talk about what they’re going through. But help is available, and it works.
Stonkered or clutched or quite simply going insane, someone reaches for the phone and punches the most famous number on the continent: the ten nines that key you into Hearing Aid.
(Read more about Brunner's hearing aid)
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 10/6/2013)
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I might also be thinking of K-9 from Doctor Who.
