Former Purdue Psychological Sciences professor, 90, publishes book on suicide prevention hotlines 60 years after starting Lafayette Crisis Center

Two Purdue University students in 1990 wait for calls in the Crisis Center, a facility started by former Purdue Psychological Sciences professor Don Hartsough.(Purdue Archives)
Written by: Tim Brouk, tbrouk@purdue.edu
What started as just putting thoughts to paper during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic turned into a recently published book by Don Hartsough, a 90-year-old former Purdue University psychological sciences professor.
While attempting something constructive during the 2020 lockdown and after the death of his wife of 63 years, the former clinical psychology associate professor wanted to get the history of the Lafayette Crisis Center on record. Afterall, he established the Crisis Center in late 1964 with just one phone in Purdue’s clinical psychology graduate student office space. Today, the Crisis Center resides in a building off campus in Lafayette and is managed by Mental Health America. It’s led by one fulltime, paid director, Deanna Scowden, and dozens of volunteers wanting to help those in mental crisis.
“The Crisis Center Story” was put out by Luminare Press last spring and is available on Amazon. Hartsough retold the history of the Crisis Center but in a universal way. The book details effective ways to help someone in crisis, including excerpts from real phone conversations that were modified to disguise the identity of the caller, Hartsough obtained from Crisis Center records. Callers to the Crisis Center were guaranteed confidentially of their name and the nature of their call. The story also weaves in how other local hotlines gave way to the national service 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.
“I feel really good about having written (a book) about crisis intervention and the Crisis Center. That’s the highlight of my professional life for sure,” said Hartsough from his home in Bend, Oregon.
From the first graduate students that manned the phone in 1964 to the numerous undergraduates that have volunteered there in the decades since, Purdue’s Department of Psychological Sciences is woven into the DNA of the Lafayette Crisis Center. Hartsough and generations of students after him had a hand in potentially saving the lives of thousands.
Turbulent inspiration
When Hartsough arrived at Purdue in the fall of 1964, he quickly noticed the temperament of the turbulent times that were going on both on- and off-campus — the recent assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Civil Rights issues, the Vietnam War, just to name a few. Hartsough thought students could benefit from some real time, after hours help. With the approval of the then Purdue Dean of Men O. D. Roberts, Hartsough set up the original Crisis Phone Service, which operated only nights. In the 1970s, the name was changed to the Crisis Center, and it became a 24 hours, seven days a week resource.
Of the first 1,100 calls during those first 18 months, Hartsough noted many came from Lafayette and rural Tippecanoe County. The word was spreading that Purdue psychological sciences established a valuable, potentially life-saving resource.
As the years passed, the Crisis Center outgrew the space on campus. Hartsough moved operations to a rental house in Lafayette and hired the center’s first director. Over the decades, the center moved four times. But no matter the location, the phone number stayed the same and the high-pressure calls kept coming.
Hartsough recognized the need for in-depth training when a human life is hanging in the balance. He put his volunteers through numerous hypothetical calls before they were allowed to handle real crisis calls.
Calls ranged from someone ready to take their own life to teenagers having a hard time dealing with their parents, according to Hartsough. No matter the severity of the situation, his volunteers used their training to bring comfort and purpose for the upset callers.
Seeds planted

Don Hartsough answers a call in the Crisis Center in the 1970s.
One of Hartsough’s proudest memories stems from those early graduate students’ enthusiasm to help. One of his first students, Lenny Echterling, ended up in clinical psychology academia and published two textbooks about suicide intervention. Echterling cited his years working the phone at the Crisis Center for his career inspiration.
Many other students saw their experience handling calls as a resume builder and a way to flex their therapeutic skills beyond a traditional counseling session.
“The Crisis Center allows students to engage deeply with people with tremendous personal issues to deal with,” Hartsough said. “And you’re talking to them as a person, not a student. For students, this was a tremendous step forward because they can actually begin to process some of the things they were learning in their programs.”
Hartsough left Purdue in 1988 to expand his reach to help those in crisis. He worked with Indianapolis city and Marion County governments, often collaborating with the police departments to help individuals in crisis. Hartsough retired in 1999 and moved to Bend. Despite the 2,098 miles from Lafayette, he still feels immense pride in the Crisis Center’s now 60 years of service to the community and its people in most emotional need.
“Forming the Crisis Center was really the key to my success at Purdue and a key part of my professional life,” Hartsough recalled. “Psychological Sciences students were very involved with it the entire time I was there. … That’s something that is extremely satisfying to me.”
Students still answer the call
Corbin Adams (BS ’24) volunteered at the Crisis Center for four months during his second semester in the Purdue College of Health and Human Sciences. Then a public health major, he switched to psychological sciences after this experience manning the Crisis Center phones.
“It impacted me very positively,” said Adams, now a graduate student in clinical psychology at Indiana University-Kokomo. “It opened my eyes to how big the (mental health) problem was. It made me want to learn more and better understand and how to help them in the future.”
Adams revealed some of his four-hour shifts saw space in between calls while other shifts saw the then first-year student having to put callers on hold due to the large number of people reaching out for help. Usually, a shift is covered by one volunteer. Adams admitted the experience would get stressful but the training he received often helped himself and the callers remain calm.
“There was a lot of anxiety wanting to do your best,” Adams remembered. “The first shift was definitely nerve-wracking because you wanted to make sure that you did it right. You knew that there was a person literally talking to you that may or may not be in the process of taking their own life. Just the weight of the first shift or two just hits heavy, but after a bit you slowly get used to it. You know the drill; you know what you need to do.”
Adams remembered some calls being so intense that he was on a phone with them for more than an hour. Average calls lasted 20-30 minutes.
When a caller is suicidal, a Crisis Center volunteer’s first order of business is to separate the caller from the means they have to end their life. Ideally, they convince the caller to leave the room where the instrument is. Then, they get to know the caller — hobbies, family, job — and lead them to a better mental space.
“It was definitely a lot of adrenaline,” Adams said. “They taught us to parent and guide the client to make their own advice, to make their own decision.”
Doug Samuel, professor of psychological sciences, has had numerous students like Adams volunteer at the Lafayette Crisis Center. The experience can be vital to a budding, future clinical psychologist.
“It’s something I encourage, and I think it’s a good option,” said Samuel of his students’ volunteering. “Those that really want to do more clinical work, the question is how do they get that experience? They can’t necessarily shadow inside therapy so that (Crisis Center) is a great program for many because it gives them the ability to get some training in terms of some of those active listening skills and things like that, which would be relevant clinically as well as getting some experience just talking to folks who are in a crisis. And hopefully they can help those folks.”
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