Suicide deaths among young adults and youth declined after a federal agency simplified the phone number for a national crisis hotline and increased resources, a new study says.
The 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, run by the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, replaced 1-800-273-Talk in 2022, accompanied by a $1.5 billion campaign to expand crisis center capacity and workforce nationwide.
The change came amid a national conversation about declining mental health — particularly among American teens — that worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, suicide deaths among young adults and youth have declined 11 percent — representing 4,372 lives — from the level anticipated by a long upward trend before 2022, researchers say.
“This is one of those rare good-news stories in public health,” said Vishal Patel, first author of a paper on the study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in April. “Most population health research diagnoses issues like rising mortality and widening differences, so it was refreshing to see this intervention having an effect, though it’s not going to solve the issue on its own.”
Patel, a clinical fellow in surgery at Harvard Medical School and surgical resident at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, said that when researchers first examined figures for all age groups, the lifeline’s potential impact appeared to be slight.
