Policing is in such a horrible state in America that an emergency number that excludes police involvement seems increasingly necessary. I wonder if you can get paramedics through this route or if it just rings and you eventually get a counsellor.
U.S. transition to 988 suicide and crisis lifeline begins Saturday
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Re: U.S. transition to 988 suicide and crisis lifeline begins Saturday
#22This is a classic regulatory capture. Now that there is a standard number that has to be serviced there will be more demand for the companies providing these services. They in turn get more volume of data to sell off to the brokers.
Data from these numbers is protected by HIPAA and callers can voluntarily be anonymous.
Re: U.S. transition to 988 suicide and crisis lifeline begins Saturday
#23Policing is in such a horrible state in America that an emergency number that excludes police involvement seems increasingly necessary. I wonder if you can get paramedics through this route or if it just rings and you eventually get a counsellor.
call me a cynnic but as an american...this is theater.
people already avoid a call to 911 because the subsequent ambulance service is unaffordable and can land you in collections. they avoid the ER for the same reason. 988 assumes anyone who needs crisis care will be able to get it, or even afford it and the ecosystem of services and medications that may ensue.
988 gives, as amber alert did, a can for politicians to kick down the road and cheerlead.
Re: U.S. transition to 988 suicide and crisis lifeline begins Saturday
#24It's the number to get thousands in medical bills.
Re: U.S. transition to 988 suicide and crisis lifeline begins Saturday
#25Policing is in such a horrible state in America that an emergency number that excludes police involvement seems increasingly necessary. I wonder if you can get paramedics through this route or if it just rings and you eventually get a counsellor.
call me a cynnic but as an american...this is theater. people already avoid a call to 911 because the subsequent ambulance service is unaffordable and can land you in collections. they avoid the ER for the same reason. 988 assumes anyone who needs crisis care will be able to get it, or even afford it and the ecosystem of services and medications that may ensue. 988 gives, as amber alert did, a can for politicians to…
I don’t disagree. But I’m not sure what alternative I have to hoping this might be the start of something.
In Ontario an ambulance trip is about $40. But in the US it can be crippling.
Re: U.S. transition to 988 suicide and crisis lifeline begins Saturday
#26Policing is in such a horrible state in America that an emergency number that excludes police involvement seems increasingly necessary. I wonder if you can get paramedics through this route or if it just rings and you eventually get a counsellor.
There are thousands of stories of people calling this number and having a SWAT team show up at their home.
E: hard to even imagine what kind of an utterly horrible person would downvote this
Re: U.S. transition to 988 suicide and crisis lifeline begins Saturday
#27Numbers that I'll never dial if I'm in a sort of crisis.
Why does this get downvoted? There are many similar numbers operated by orgs that won’t call the cops on you.
Re: U.S. transition to 988 suicide and crisis lifeline begins Saturday
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
call me a cynnic but as an american...this is theater. people already avoid a call to 911 because the subsequent ambulance service is unaffordable and can land you in collections. they avoid the ER for the same reason. 988 assumes anyone who needs crisis care will be able to get it, or even afford it and the ecosystem of services and medications that may ensue. 988 gives, as amber alert did, a can for politicians to…
I don’t disagree. But I’m not sure what alternative I have to hoping this might be the start of something. In Ontario an ambulance trip is about $40. But in the US it can be crippling.
healthcare reform, gun control, education reform and labor reform. these are all very hard, but adding a telco service is relatively easy.
btw many is cities can barely keep their dispatch for 911 staffed.
Re: U.S. transition to 988 suicide and crisis lifeline begins Saturday
#29Numbers that I'll never dial if I'm in a sort of crisis.
Presumably it's for those around you to dial when you're in crisis.
Re: U.S. transition to 988 suicide and crisis lifeline begins Saturday
#30Policing is in such a horrible state in America that an emergency number that excludes police involvement seems increasingly necessary. I wonder if you can get paramedics through this route or if it just rings and you eventually get a counsellor.
I have experience in this field: I ran technology for one of the only hotlines in the US that didn't engage in non-consensual active rescue [0] [1]. I've written about this a little on this site in the past, when Crisis Text Line was caught sharing data.
Many, if not most, of these places give the operator full access to your phone number and whatever geolocation data they can get based on that. They also have policies where the operator is allowed/encouraged to call emergency services on you without your ongoing consent, or even without telling you. In my experience talking with others who have been affected by those kinds of policies, this can lead to police breaking down your door while you're naked and crying, or worse. A person in deep crisis is not likely to respond well to armed officers showing up, as the police are more likely to come into the situation looking for conflict.
Sometimes, you can call a local dispatch and just get medical services, or maybe a fire department sent first. But that's entirely up to the discretion of the dispatcher and local protocol.
There's also a relatively common experience I've heard where people who aren't actively suicidal call these lines, and the operator (I won't say counselor) is completely dismissive: "if you're not going to hurt yourself, what do you want me to do?"
Not to mention the stories I've heard where call centers just have passwords for their internal systems on sticky notes laying around on monitors...
The general field is so bleak that some other folks with peer support experience and I have started a nonprofit where one of the things we're doing is building open-source software that will let anyone create their own support line. Security and privacy are our primary concerns, ensuring that operators and callers never see each other's numbers or any kind of information.
[0] non-consensual active rescue is the practice of calling emergency services on someone without their OK
[1] The line was Trans Lifeline, which I cannot recommend supporting for other reasons at this point