Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

U.S. transition to 988 suicide and crisis lifeline begins Saturday

hhs.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 354 posts

Re: U.S. transition to 988 suicide and crisis lifeline begins Saturday

#71

Post by cmg »

jamiek88 wrote: post #58
cmg wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 polici…

> if you're not going to hurt yourself, what do you want me to do?" My brother is going through some stuff and got this exact response in the UK. If you aren’t immediately about to harm yourself there’s basically no state provided resources.

I'm so sorry to hear about your brother, Jamie. I hope he can find the support he needs. This is too common of a story.

Re: U.S. transition to 988 suicide and crisis lifeline begins Saturday

#72

Post by vorpalhex »

prvit wrote: post #64
vorpalhex wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In case anyone was wondering, most SWAT teams do 8-16 callouts a year. Major metropolitan teams might see 50ish on a busy year. The vast majority of these are hostage situations, but bomb situations and active shooters land in there too. https://www.ksl.com/article/46295693/when-swat-teams-are-use...

https://theweek.com/articles/531458/troubling-rise-swat-team... This 2015 article claims 80k deployments per year And I guess it makes little difference whether it’s the SWAT team that shoots you or just regular cops.

Your articles source for that 80k figure is literally a guess by a criminologist who gives the range "50k to 80k" based on literally no data. The only data they are using is PG county MD which has one of the highest murder rates in the country.

In 2021 there were ~1,000 police shootings. 85% of shot suspects were armed with a deadly weapon. That's in a nation with a population of 334,000,000 people.

Re: U.S. transition to 988 suicide and crisis lifeline begins Saturday

#73

Post by lotsofpulp »

morelisp wrote: post #36
pigtailgirl wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

-- An ambulance in Ontario is $40 if you have OHIP - I know plenty of non-OHIP folks who have gotten hit with $200+ ambulance bills - myself included --

My last ambulance trip in the US was billed at $12000. With my (good!) insurance I still had to pay $500.

$500 for a specialized vehicle on demand 24/7 with somewhat trained workers who have to deal with undesirable work seems pretty good.

Assuming that was under the deductible, so the ambulance provider did not get paid anything else, and $500 was the negotiated pricing for members of your insurance plan.

Re: U.S. transition to 988 suicide and crisis lifeline begins Saturday

#74

Post by mathogre »

cpill wrote: post #53
fuckcensorship wrote: post #42

Suicide hotlines, on the surface, seem like a good thing. Having a phone number someone can call 24/7 to talk to someone who is trained in helping someone undergoing a mental health crisis seems like an effective way to reduce suicides and benefit mental health overall. However, I think they have the opposite effect in practice. I suffer from pretty severe depression. It runs in my family and it is something I've str…

Quoted post unavailable.

fuckcensorship: "During depressive episodes, I have no interest in connecting with other people. This includes friends, therapists, family, etc. So the idea that I would ever pick up the phone and call a suicide hotline to talk to someone on the phone about my depression is borderline laughable."

cpill: "yeah, but clearly you haven't committed suicide yet, so maybe you don't really know what is like to _really_ want to kill yourself? I knew someone who did do it and they did want to connect every time they tried, even the last one."

cpill, it's good your friend wanted to connect on every attempt they made. Not all people are like that. Additionally, saying that a person who doesn't actually kill themself doesn't know what it is like to want to kill themself suggests a lack of knowledge on your part. There are people who cry out for help; there are also people who simply exit.

fuckcensorship, I grok.

Re: U.S. transition to 988 suicide and crisis lifeline begins Saturday

#75

Post by [deleted] »

prvit wrote: post #26
Waterluvian wrote: post #21

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.

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

[deleted]

Re: U.S. transition to 988 suicide and crisis lifeline begins Saturday

#76

Post by lotsofpulp »

nimbius wrote: post #28
Waterluvian wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They are all very expensive, and so it is a political football of how to minimally fund them while also being able to say society is “offering” them.

Re: U.S. transition to 988 suicide and crisis lifeline begins Saturday

#77

Post by JshWright »

pbourke wrote: post #63
kelseyfrog wrote: post #37

What constitutes a 988 emergency? I was raised with a sacrosanct view of 911. Do not call unless it is a bona fide emergency. This means something along the lines of a situation outside my expertise that poses a threat to life. Broadly speaking it ranges from medical, physical, security, and probably a host of other things I'm forgetting. However, I don't have the same instilled ideas about 988. What are the sufficie…

It gets even more complicated when some areas have emergency and non-emergency converged to 911 like my county in WA does.

Even in areas where they still exist as separate numbers, they are pretty much always handled by the same calltakers.

Re: U.S. transition to 988 suicide and crisis lifeline begins Saturday

#78

Post by stop50 »

morelisp wrote: post #36
pigtailgirl wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

-- An ambulance in Ontario is $40 if you have OHIP - I know plenty of non-OHIP folks who have gotten hit with $200+ ambulance bills - myself included --

My last ambulance trip in the US was billed at $12000. With my (good!) insurance I still had to pay $500.

Despite me knowing the american system, it still freaks me out seeing the numbers. the last time i had to pay anything for anything medical was the deductible of 5€ (minimum 5€ maximum 10€ 10% of the price for everything you buy in one go, except generica which are free from deductions)

Re: U.S. transition to 988 suicide and crisis lifeline begins Saturday

#79

Post by adamredwoods »

Finally. This is excellent. Offloading mental health issues from the police is critical to reforming our country.

For some of the doubters on this initiative, NPR had a good discussion:

https://www.npr.org/2022/07/16/1111868486/calling-988-in-the...

Post reply on HN