The 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline

The country already had a suicide hotline. In 2005 the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline opened on 1-800-273-8255, funded through the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) and routed to a network of local crisis centers. It took 46,000 calls in its first year. A Spanish-language line followed in 2006, and from 2007 callers could press 1 for the Veterans Crisis Line. By 2020 its volume had grown to 3.3 million calls, chats and texts.

The number was hard to remember. In the National Suicide Hotline Designation Act, Congress called it cumbersome and cited an average of 129 suicides a day in the United States. On 16 July 2020 the Federal Communications Commission issued its final order designating 988 for the Lifeline and the Veterans Crisis Line and gave telephone companies until 16 July 2022 to switch it on; in 2021 it added texting. The Act, approved on 17 October 2020 after passing the Senate in May and the House in September, wrote 988 into the Communications Act. It let states charge phone fees for 988 services, kept in separate accounts, and asked for a strategy to train counselors for high-risk groups, including LGBTQ youth, minorities and rural residents.

The switch came on 16 July 2022. About 200 local, independently run crisis centers answered calls, texts and chats, and the Lifeline answered nearly 5 million contacts in its first year. Spanish text and chat and a videophone service for deaf and hard-of-hearing callers were added in 2023. In October 2024 the FCC adopted rules requiring wireless carriers to route 988 calls by the caller's approximate location, not by area code.

A separate option for LGBTQ+ youth, reached by pressing 3, began as a pilot in 2022. KFF Health News, citing SAMHSA data, reported that it took nearly 1.6 million calls, texts and chats after its rollout in October 2022, out of about 16.7 million contacts to the Lifeline as a whole. SAMHSA ended it on 17 July 2025, saying the money set aside for it had been spent and that all callers would be served by the general line. Several states, among them California, Colorado, Illinois and Nevada, moved to fill the gap with their own training, fees and other measures.