988 Crisis Line Has Answered 10 Million Calls, Texts & Chats Over Two Years

In the past two years, 988 Lifeline crisis counselors across the United States have responded to more than 10 million calls, texts, and chats from people with suicidal thoughts, or other mental health and addiction-related crises. Of the 10 million contacts, 1.7 million were via text messages. Nearly 1.2 million calls were answered by the Veterans Crisis Line (through the 988 Press 1 option).

Use of three sub-options added in 2023 are as follows:

• Spanish language crisis counselors (pressing option 2 or texting Ayuda to 988) have responded to about 20,000 Spanish-language chats and texts.
• Specialized counselors for gender or sexual orientation issues (pressing option 3 or texting Pride to 988), have responded to more than 475,000 calls, text, and chats from LGBTQI+ youth and young adults.
• Videophone crisis counselors have responded to 20,000 American Sign Language users seeking help.

The national 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline launched on July 16, 2022. It is a partnership among the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). When it went live, the FCC and HHS said the 10-digit Lifeline number 1-800-273-TALK (8255) would continue to be operational and would route calls to 988 indefinitely. In 2021, the Lifeline received 3.6 million calls, chats, and texts. During the first six months after the 988 Lifeline went live, it received 2.1 million calls.

Further enhancements are planned for the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline to implement georouting so that wireless calls to the 988 Lifeline will be routed to a response center based on the caller’s approximate physical location (not the caller’s precise location), rather than the area code of their wireless device. Georouting allows callers to maintain additional privacy because, unlike geolocation, it does not provide a precise location. HHS has been working with the major U.S. wireless carriers to launch georouting during 2024. In May 2024, the FCC issued a proposed rule to require 988 georouting. Comments were due by June 28, 2024.

SAMHSA reports the 988 Lifeline Performance Metrics in a monthly dashboard at https://www.samhsa.gov/find-help/988/performance-metrics (accessed August 21, 2024).

A link to the full text of “FCC Proposed Rule: National Suicide Hotline Act of 2018” is in the OPEN MINDS Circle Library at https://openminds.com/market-intelligence/resources/052924fccnprm988georouting/.

OPEN MINDS last reported on this topic in “988 National Mental Health Hotline Receives 2.1 Million Calls Since 2022 Launch,” which published on February 13, 2023, at https://openminds.com/market-intelligence/news/since-launch-in-july-2022-2-1-million-contacts-with-new-national-988-mental-health-hotline/.

For more information, contact: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 5600 Fishers Lane, Rockville, Maryland 20857; Fax: 240-276-2135; Email: media@samhsa.hhs.gov; Website: https://www.samhsa.gov/