A new universal suicide crisis lifeline launched on July 16, making it possible for anyone to pick up the phone, dial 988, and talk, text, or chat with a trained mental health counselor for free. Amy Morin, editor in chief for Verywell Mind, joins Cheddar News to discuss the hotline's importance, what callers can expect, and more. 

Cheddar's News Wrap

New 988 Hotline is the 911 for Mental Health Emergencies

and a new universal suicide crisis lifeline launched on july 16th. Now anyone in the U. S. Can pick up the phone dial 988 and talk text or chat with a trained mental health counselor for free and while it's a positive step for mental health crisis care experts in this space say it's just the beginning. Joining me now is Amy morin editor in chief for very well mind and a licensed psychotherapist. Amy, thank you so much for joining us. Can you give us a sense of how often the updated hotline has been used since its launch? Was there a noticeable spiking collars worldwide? There was so in the first week that it launched there was 96,000 people who called the hotline which was up About 45% since the week before that and about 66% year over year. So people are definitely using this hotline. Now can you share some examples of how it's actually already saved lives or the lives of some folks loved ones? Yeah. I've heard a lot of stories from people who say, you know, I didn't know what to do, I didn't know where to turn. One woman said she had a depressed adult son who hadn't gotten out of bed in days and she said I didn't know what to do. He's an adult, I can't physically drag him to the doctor. But by calling this number, she got information about resources and how she could help him and she said you know I'm pretty sure that that could have saved his life. I had another woman who was struggling with substance abuse issues. She said, my friends and family don't understand. They just told me to stop. She was so ashamed of herself that she didn't want to leave the house. She didn't want to do anything. She felt like she was helpless and helpless. But she said by calling this hotline, she was able to get information on resources, get some emotional support and she felt a lot less alone. Those are some really harrowing stories there. Amy now how is 988 filling the mental health care gap? And what is the ultimate goal with this? Well, when you're feeling emotionally overwhelmed and you're struggling with a mental health issue or substance abuse problem, the last thing you want to do is call 911 and that's not the appropriate level of care. An ambulance coming out to your house or sending the police out to your house isn't gonna cut it. And sometimes people don't need to go to the emergency room instead, they might just need some emotional support from somebody or they might need to problem solve. What can you do about this tomorrow? How do you get through tonight? How do you reach out to a therapist in your area? And so one of the great things about this hotline is when you call it, the goal is to be able to talk to somebody who's right in your community. Somebody who knows the resources, they know what it's like to either live in your city or in a rural area and they can connect you to the things that are available to you right now. Speaking of that experience, what can callers actually expect to go through when they call 988. And on the other side, you know how do responders know when to take immediate action if it's a crisis or not? So by calling the hotline, you might have somebody who just listens who explains. Yeah, I've been there, I know what you're going through. They might be able to give you some emotional support and often that's enough. People just need to hear that they just want to hear a friendly voice when they're really struggling. Other people though just don't know where to turn how to get help. And so a crisis worker can give you that information, they might connect you to therapy, tell you where to go. They might be able to talk about an urgent care, There's an urgent care for mental health needs in your in your area. Sometimes it's about problem solving like who can you talk to and if you don't have health insurance, what are your options? Occasionally they will send out a mobile crisis unit. Some areas have that available to them so that if somebody is, it's a life or death situation or they're really concerned about suicide. They may have a mobile crisis unit who can come to you and get you the care and treatment that you need. Now I know that call centers are already stretched very thin and there is some expectation that call volume will actually double with the update of this hotline. Our center is ready for this. What still needs to be done to prepare? Well that was one of the big issues with launching this. There wasn't a lot of federal oversight and it's really up to the states themselves to decide how they're going to staff these hotlines and how much how much to really put into it. And so some states just aren't as prepared as others. So for now there may be a wait list and that's the last thing you want is when you're calling in a crisis to have to wait a few minutes to be able to talk to somebody. But one thing that we do is if your local call center, if there all of their lines are busy, you should get routed to the national call center so that you can still talk to somebody quickly. It just may take a little bit longer. Their goal is to be able to reduce wait times once we know exactly how many people are going to use this service on the plus side, it may be that fewer people call +911 because they're calling +988. So we may be able to shift some resources so that we can make sure that when people call this hotline that there will be somebody to answer the phone really quickly. Now as you mentioned that this is rolling out at the state level. Some states as you said, are a bit more prepared than others. What does that roll out process look like? And what can these states do to ensure that they are ready for this? So states have known this was coming for a while. However, there just wasn't a lot of oversight into how do we do this And there's a chat line as well. So how do you man the chat line and how do you make sure that we have somebody who can answer text messages and we're trying to make this available in both english and spanish. How do you do that or what do you do if somebody speaks a different language and get translators involved. So States are working on this and figuring out how do we mobilize so that we can get local people. So some are looking for more volunteers. Some are hiring somewhere looking at shifting their funding so that more calls can go. Local statistics are gonna keep rolling out over the next few months where we find out how many states are able to continue to manage those calls on a local level. The States that are struggling to do that and those calls end up going nationally will hopefully then be able to problem solve and pour more resources into their state hotline. Amy Thank you so much for joining us for that very important conversation. That's Amy morin, editor in chief for very well mind and a licensed psychotherapist.