This effort started last year when I received an email from a mother in the U.S. who had trouble finding the phone number for the poisoning hotline after her daughter accidentally ingested something potentially poisonous (fortunately, her daughter was fine). As a result, people in the U.S. performing various searches including "poison control" began to see a special result displaying the national phone number for the American Association of Poison Control Centers last autumn.
Soon after we added poison control information to search results, we heard from some of my Google colleagues whose lives had been affected by suicide and who thought that suicide prevention could be another case for a special search result. In April we began prominently displaying the number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at the top of the results page for certain search queries in the U.S. Since then, our friends at the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline have reported a 9 percent increase in legitimate calls to its hotline.
So, following positive feedback from consumers and our hotline partners, we decided to expand the poison control and suicide prevention special search results beyond the U.S - including to Australia. We looked for hotlines that are available nationally and 24/7.
From today, in Australia, search queries related to suicide will return the result for the hotline number of Lifeline, and those related to poisoning will show the hotline number for the Poisons Information Centre.
An emergency is stressful enough. We hope this small step helps connect people with the information they need immediately.
Posted by Roni Zeiger, MD, Chief Health Strategist
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