Behavioral Health Link
Can SAMHSA and state leaders keep the promise of 988 without reporting on and supporting follow-up care?
When the FCC recommended to Congress in 2019 that 988 be designated as the new three-digit number for mental health and suicide crises, it described the evidence simply and powerfully: “Crisis call centers save lives.”
That statement was built on decades of research showing that connection saves lives — and that reconnection saves even more. In the same landmark report, the FCC highlighted a statistic that should guide our nation’s next steps: nearly 80% of people who received follow-up calls from Lifeline crisis centers said those calls stop them from killing themselves. The FCC noted that these callers said, “follow-up gave them hope, made them feel cared about, and helped them connect to further mental health resources.”
Those findings for the Lifeline were consistent with global research on the impact of follow-up contacts on preventing suicide. Yet somehow, an essential life-saving and human part of the 988 system — the act of reaching back out — remains largely unfunded, unmeasured, and underreported.