National 988 mental health hotline back up after outage

WASHINGTON (AP) — The nation’s 988 hotline, meant to assist anybody experiencing a psychological well being emergency, was again up and working Friday after a daylong outage.

The decision service, which was launched in July, was restored shortly earlier than midnight on Thursday. Folks experiencing a psychological well being disaster have been nonetheless capable of attain a psychological well being counselor by texting 988 or by visiting 988lifeline.org to begin a chat.

The federal authorities is investigating the hotline’s outage, Well being and Human Companies spokeswoman Sarah Lovenheim stated in a tweet late Thursday night.

“Whereas HHS and VA instantly acted to supply assist to 988 callers through textual content, chat, and alternate numbers, the disruption of telephone service was unacceptable, and HHS continues to analyze the foundation reason for the outage,” she tweeted, referencing the acronym for Veterans Affairs.

The telecommunications firm Intrado, based mostly in Omaha, Nebraska, offers the emergency response service. It didn’t return repeated requests for remark.

In an announcement on Intrado’s web site on Thursday, the corporate stated it was “working as rapidly as attainable to renew full service.” The outage additionally impacted the Substance Abuse and Psychological Well being Companies Administration’s Catastrophe Misery Helpline.

The 988 hotline is a nationwide helpline staffed with psychological well being counselors across the nation that’s designed to be as simple to recollect because the emergency line, 911. Because it’s launch, the hotline has fielded roughly 8,000 telephone calls a day from these in search of psychological well being assist.