If you or someone you know is struggling or in a crisis, help is available. Call, text or chat the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline to reach a trained crisis counselor who can provide support in a mental health, substance use or suicide crisis. To learn how 988 can help in a crisis, read our 988 FAQs.
NAMI’s priority is to reimagine crisis response in our country — ensuring that every person in crisis, and their loved ones, deserves a humane response that connects them to appropriate and timely care. 988 is just the first step.
Too often, people with mental illness do not receive a mental health response when experiencing a mental health crisis. Instead, people in crisis often encounter law enforcement and crowded emergency departments rather than a mental health professional — often leading to tragic results. According to The Washington Post, one in five fatal police shootings since 2015 involved a person with a mental illness, and approximately 2 million times each year, someone with a mental illness is booked into jail. Millions more end up in emergency departments that are often ill-equipped to address mental health crises, often waiting hours or days to access care. We deserve better.
NAMI calls for a standard of care for crisis services in every community that includes — 24/7 call centers that answer 988 contacts locally, mobile crisis teams and crisis stabilization options — that end the cycle of ER visits, arrests, incarceration and homelessness.
988 is the nationwide, three-digit number for anyone to contact to be connected to the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, and it is available via call, text or chat (988Lifeline.org). By contacting 988, a person will be connected to a trained crisis counselor and receive compassionate, accessible care when they or someone they know are experiencing mental health-related distress — whether that is thoughts of suicide, mental health or substance use crisis or any other kind of emotional distress.
Anyone can call, text or chat 988 and be connected to trained crisis counselors in the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline network. This new (launched in 2022) easy-to-access number will save lives, but more work is needed to truly #ReimagineCrisis.
The goal of the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is to provide immediate crisis intervention and support. When someone contacts 988, a trained crisis counselor will answer, listen to the person, and provide support and share resources, as needed. 988 crisis counselors are trained to help in a variety of crisis situations, and no one is required to disclose any personal information to receive help.
For most people, calling, texting or chatting 988 is the intervention. Crisis counselors will be able to resolve the urgent needs of the majority of people, reducing the need for an in-person response. See our FAQs to learn more about how 988 works and what to expect when you reach out to 988.
You can reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by calling 988, texting 988 or chatting via Lifeline’s website.
While an easy-to-remember number is important, we need more than a number.
NAMI is leading efforts to ensure everyone has access to a crisis response system that offers someone to talk to, someone to respond and a safe place for help. It will take federal, state and local action to implement this vision for crisis care in every community and ensure everyone in crisis gets the help they need, when they need it.
Advocates must educate state and federal policymakers about how our current response to crisis falls short, and how a reimagined crisis response system will help. This system should include:
The National Suicide Hotline Designation Act of 2020, the law that established the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, included a provision that allows states to charge fees on cell phone bills (similar to how we fund 911) to help fund this continuum of crisis response services. NAMI State Organizations and partners across the country are working with state policymakers to implement state legislation that not only includes a fee to fund crisis services but also outlines crisis services that will be available statewide to respond to the needs of people contacting 988.
Learn more about model state legislation to build 988 crisis response services.
Want to know what your state legislators are doing to support 988 and crisis response? NAMI has an up-to-date, interactive map tracking legislation across the country.
Mental health advocates across the country have the power to demand a comprehensive crisis system in every community, available to every person who needs it. You can help by making legislators aware of both the problem — our inadequate crisis system — and the solution. Here are six ways you can act today:
NAMI and Ipsos have released several waves of polling that show broad support for funding 988 and building a full crisis response system.
Summer 2024 (conducted June 7-9, 2024 of 2,048 U.S. adults)
Summer 2023 (conducted June 2-11, 2023, and surveyed 2,073 U.S. adults)
Spring 2022 (conducted May 20-22, 2022, and surveyed 2,049 U.S. adults)
Fall 2021 (conducted Oct. 22–25, 2021, and surveyed 2,049 U.S. adults)
NAMI HelpLine is available M-F, 10 a.m. – 10 p.m. ET. Call 800-950-6264,
text “helpline” to 62640, or chat online. In a crisis, call or text 988 (24/7).
