Latest news with #JonathanCantor
Yahoo
04-03-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
You call the 988 Crisis Lifeline. After that, where do you go? Study shows drop in options.
More than 150,000 calls, texts and chat messages have been answered by counselors working for the 988 Wisconsin Lifeline since the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline shifted to a three-digit number in July 2022. But what do people do once they hang up — not just in Wisconsin, but across the country? For people who need more support once their call ends, finding a crisis center might be harder to come by today compared to when 988 first launched. That's according to a new national study published in JAMA Psychiatry. It found that, despite increases in calls and messages to 988, the number of community crisis facilities has mostly decreased since the launch of 988. The report also highlighted a slight uptick in peer-support services, in which people facing behavioral health challenges are paired up with counselors who have overcome similar challenges. While facilities in general decreased, peer-support services saw an increase. Wisconsin was a bit of an outlier. It saw neither an increase nor decrease in crisis community centers — although it did see a jump of more than 5% in peer-support services. Jonathan Cantor, a policy researcher at American nonprofit think-tank RAND, which conducted the study, told the Journal Sentinel that the success of 988 depends on whether people have follow-up access to crisis facilities. In other words, the volume of calls can only do so much if a caller has nowhere to go with after it. "There's been this large increase in engagement with 988, but 988 is just one component of the broader crisis infrastructure," Cantor said. "We wanted to see if there was any change in the availability of crisis services after the launch of 988 because there was this increased demand. But we really didn't see any except for peer-support services." Wisconsin's current and developing crisis facilities run counter to some of the national trends outlined in the JAMA report. Caroline Crehan Neumann, crisis services coordinator for Wisconsin Department of Health Services, told the Journal Sentinel that many of the people who receive support in the state from talking with a Lifeline counselor are not simply left to their own devices once the conversation ends. Rather, they are are set up with one or more referrals to explore ongoing behavioral health services, such as therapy, local support groups, or financial assistance support. That's been helped by the growth in staff at Wisconsin Family Services, the organization that hires and trains 988 Wisconsin Lifeline counselors. Currently, 988 Wisconsin Lifeline is staffed by 74 counselors, a 37% increase since last December. "This data shows us that 988 is not only for immediate support but also for ongoing, local care," Crehan Neumann said. "The data also gives us insight into why people are looking for support." While the RAND study found a small but significant decrease in mobile crisis response and suicide prevention services, Cantor said that Wisconsin's mobile crisis slightly increased, making it "relatively stable" compared to the rest of the country. Mobile crisis response is a type of intervention that allows for face-to-face counseling services to take place in someone's home, neighborhood or community. The idea is to avoid unnecessary emergency department visits and hospitalizations, which can themselves be traumatizing. Access Community Clinics, which provide mobile crisis response, have cropped up in recent years across Milwaukee County and Dane County. That tells Cantor that researchers need to continue tracking changes in the future to determine where unmet needs are. The hope is that these conversations pave the way for the creation of more crisis facilities across the country. Crehan Neumann said plans are in the works to use 988 data to better understand the impact the three-digit number has had on people's emotional and mental wellbeing. A consumer satisfaction survey went out a few months ago to 988 chatters and texters to learn more about their interactions with counselors. "988 is here and so, for best success, we're going to need a coordinated crisis services system where, once you call 988, counselors can help you identify where to go," Cantor said. This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: More Wisconsinites are calling 988, but crisis services have not grown
Yahoo
30-01-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Crisis services haven't adapted to 988 suicide hotline, study says
Most community crisis services did not expand after the launch of the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, potentially blunting the effectiveness of the hotline, a new study says. Walk-in psychiatric services, mobile crisis response units and suicide prevention programs all declined following the launch of the 988 line in July 2022, researchers reported in a new study published Wednesday in JAMA Psychiatry. "The lack of meaningful growth in most crisis services may limit the long-run success of 988, in particular if callers feel that reaching out to 988 fails to result in access to appropriate sources of care," lead investigator Jonathan Cantor, a policy researcher at the nonprofit research organization RAND, said in a news release. The 988 Lifeline provides a single easy-to-remember phone number for people in a suicidal or mental health crisis. It replaced the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, which had been reachable through a 10-digit 800 number. The line is intended to help counsel people in crisis and, if necessary, connect them with a variety of mental health services. However, researchers suspected that mental health emergency response systems might not have been able to rapidly beef up their operations to handle the potentially increased workload from an easier-to-use crisis line. For example, the U.S. continues to have a shortage of psychiatric beds in many regions, as well as a limited and unevenly distributed mental health care workforce, researchers noted. For the new study, they analyzed federal data regarding the availability of crisis services offered by mental health treatment facilities between November 2021, prior to the 988 lifeline's launch, and June 2023. They found that: • Emergency psychiatric walk-in services declined from 32% to 29% at facilities. • Mobile crisis response dropped from 22% to 21% of facilities. • Availability of suicide prevention services declined from 69% to 68%. The only type of psychiatric assistance that increased following 988's launch involved peer support services, which connects people in crisis with others who have lived through similar situations. Those programs increased from being available at 39% of facilities to 42%. Public mental health facilities had the highest odds of offering these four crisis services, followed by not-for-profit facilities. For-profit mental health facilities consistently offered the most limited services when it came to crisis response, researchers found. Those constitute about a quarter of all mental health facilities in the United States. Researchers noted that in 2023, only eight states set aside money for mental health services in response to 988's launch. "Mental health officials and policymakers should consider strategies to boost the financing and availability of crisis services at mental health treatment facilities to meet increased demand generated by the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline," Cantor said. If you or someone you know is in crisis, call the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. More information The 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline has more about services offered by the hotline. Copyright © 2025 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
