To understand the characteristics of Beijing crisis hotline callers who seeking help for their own problems and the rates of factors related to suicidal behaviors among female and male callers.

All callers using the hotline for the purpose of their own problems from December 2002 to December 2008 were recruited and interviewed. Information of demographic characteristics, common problems that need counselling and suicidal-behavior-related factors were collected via the hotline.

Among the 38 526 callers, 19 447(50.5%) were females, 31 351(81.4%) were younger than 5 years old, 24 637(63.9%) had a high school or higher education level, and 17 462(45.3%) had never received any professional help for mental health problems. Three most common problems were mental disorders, seeking for information, and family relationship problems. Compared to male callers, female callers were more likely to be 30 years or older, having higher education level, currently married or having a history of marriage, and having more family relationship problems. Male callers had more work,study, or financial problems than female callers(P<0.05). Among 22 415 callers who received assessment of suicidal-behavior-related factors, 12 232(54.6%) reported having current suicidal ideation or behavior, 4 316(19.3%) had prior suicide attempts; 16 737(74.7%) had symptoms of mental illness, 7 980(35.6%) had a high score of depressive symptoms; 11 630(51.9%) had chronic negative life events. Female callers had higher prevalence of most suicidal-related-factors than male callers, which are suicidal ideation or behavior(58.2% vs. 50.5% ), prior suicide history(22.8% vs.15.0%), symptoms of mental illness (75.3% vs.73.9%), serious physical illness(14.0% vs.12.3%), chronic negative life events(55.3% vs.48.0%), physical/sexual abuse(6.1% vs.3.7%), acute negative life events(33.1% vs.26.8%), relatives or associates had prior suicide history(29.4% vs.28.2%)，male callers had higher prevalence of substance abuse than female callers(13.6% vs.8.8%), P<0.05 or P<0.01.

The rates of suicide-related-factors are high among Beijing crisis hotline callers who seeking help for their problems. Demographic characteristics and prevalence of suicidal-behavior-related factors are different between male and female callers.

Psychological crisis; Hotline; Characteristics; Suicidal risk; Gender