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988 Number Goes Live Nationwide for Suicide Prevention Hotline

United States totaled more than 46,000 in 2020.

New to me, but old news to some is this article: “U.S. suicide hotline 988 is set to go live, but many states may not be ready.”

We are great as a nation about announcing new services, but then not having the systems in place “everywhere” to handle the new service being announced.

Even though there are still some months to go, likely many places throughout the nation will not be able to ramp up and be ready for implementation of the new national number.
Eric Holdeman is a contributing writer for Emergency Management magazine and is the former director of the King County, Wash., Office of Emergency Management.