The suicide and crisis lifeline 988 has been recognized as the “911 for mental health.” However, the number of calls to it has been increasing, and the lifeline is having trouble keeping up with all the calls.
Many callers have been put on hold or completely ignored because of a lack of funding and understaffing.
While 80% of calls are acknowledged, around 18% of 1 million calls are ignored. This poses an issue because “a person died by suicide every 11 minutes in 2020,” so it might already be too late by the time the counselor answers the caller.
The lines response speed has recently improved since the beginning of 2022: It improved from 42 percent of calls answered to 74 percent with a wait time of 3 minutes.
Despite the improvements that have been made, the lifeline strives to be better. Its future goal is to answer at least 95 percent of calls within 20 seconds and to send crisis teams directly to the callers, “as well as mental health triage centers.” This will help more people with mental health crises.
For these improvements to become a reality, good funding is also required, which is hard to come by. This is because of a law signed by Trump in October 2020 that states the financing of call centers go to the states.
Some states have offered to raise money for the lifeline, including monthly fees, but most are investing in a new lifeline.
If this lifeline continues to be funded the same amount, the percentage of answered calls will slowly decrease.
The national labor shortage is causing the lifeline to have an inadequate number of staff, which is another predicament it’s facing.
This impacts the performance of the lifeline and the employees. “The chief advocacy of the National Alliance on Mental Illness…noted that burnout was also a concern for professionals already in this space.”
The 988 lifeline will continue to improve, but it will take a couple of years before it becomes as good as 911. “People’s lives are on the line, so we must get there.” Said Preston Mitchum.
Source:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/15/us/988-mental-health-lifeline.html
Many callers have been put on hold or completely ignored because of a lack of funding and understaffing.
While 80% of calls are acknowledged, around 18% of 1 million calls are ignored. This poses an issue because “a person died by suicide every 11 minutes in 2020,” so it might already be too late by the time the counselor answers the caller.
The lines response speed has recently improved since the beginning of 2022: It improved from 42 percent of calls answered to 74 percent with a wait time of 3 minutes.
Despite the improvements that have been made, the lifeline strives to be better. Its future goal is to answer at least 95 percent of calls within 20 seconds and to send crisis teams directly to the callers, “as well as mental health triage centers.” This will help more people with mental health crises.
For these improvements to become a reality, good funding is also required, which is hard to come by. This is because of a law signed by Trump in October 2020 that states the financing of call centers go to the states.
Some states have offered to raise money for the lifeline, including monthly fees, but most are investing in a new lifeline.
If this lifeline continues to be funded the same amount, the percentage of answered calls will slowly decrease.
The national labor shortage is causing the lifeline to have an inadequate number of staff, which is another predicament it’s facing.
This impacts the performance of the lifeline and the employees. “The chief advocacy of the National Alliance on Mental Illness…noted that burnout was also a concern for professionals already in this space.”
The 988 lifeline will continue to improve, but it will take a couple of years before it becomes as good as 911. “People’s lives are on the line, so we must get there.” Said Preston Mitchum.
Source:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/15/us/988-mental-health-lifeline.html
