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WASHINGTON – A bill working its way through the U.S. Congress that would mandate study of the feasibility of a three-digit phone number for suicide prevention and mental health crisis has the potential to establish not only a much-needed national hotline, but more broadly “reboot U.S. crisis care,” Michael F. Hogan, PhD, said at the annual conference of the American Association of Suicidology.
“If we get this legislation passed and some funding, it is a remarkable opportunity to get it right,” said Dr. Hogan, a mental health policy consultant based in Delmar, N.Y., and former commissioner of the New York State Office of Mental Health. A single, “N11,” three-digit phone number for suicide prevention, substance abuse, and mental health crises would “provide a skeleton for a whole new system of crisis centers.”
The pending legislation, the National Suicide Hotline Improvement Act of 2017, “would create parity between brain health and heart health,” Dr. Hogan noted in a video interview. The bill passed the Senate in November 2017, and in late March 2018 had a positive hearing before the Energy and Commerce Committee of the House of Representatives. “The prospects are pretty good,” he said.
Currently, U.S. services are “a mess,” bemoaned Dr. Hogan, who attributed the problem to abandonment of a national program starting in 1981 because of funding changes introduced by the Reagan administration. The centerpiece of the current U.S. system, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, receives limited and indirect federal support and relies on coordination among more than 160 local crisis line operations across the country that get no federal funding. Many calls into the Lifeline are, by necessity, answered outside of the locality or even the state from where the call was placed. Inadequacies in the resources available to help people who are suicidal or having other mental health crises have placed the response burden on police departments and emergency departments, “the worst place to go” for mental health care, Dr. Hogan said.
“The primary way around the country to address the problem is cops and EDs; that’s expensive and bad. When you don’t have good crisis services, people go to emergency departments where it’s ‘go upstairs or go home,’ ” he lamented.
Establishment of a centralized and funded U.S. crisis call system would tie into other measures aimed at transforming national crisis services called for by the Crisis Now program of the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors, Dr. Hogan said.
Dr. Hogan had no disclosures.
WASHINGTON – A bill working its way through the U.S. Congress that would mandate study of the feasibility of a three-digit phone number for suicide prevention and mental health crisis has the potential to establish not only a much-needed national hotline, but more broadly “reboot U.S. crisis care,” Michael F. Hogan, PhD, said at the annual conference of the American Association of Suicidology.
“If we get this legislation passed and some funding, it is a remarkable opportunity to get it right,” said Dr. Hogan, a mental health policy consultant based in Delmar, N.Y., and former commissioner of the New York State Office of Mental Health. A single, “N11,” three-digit phone number for suicide prevention, substance abuse, and mental health crises would “provide a skeleton for a whole new system of crisis centers.”
The pending legislation, the National Suicide Hotline Improvement Act of 2017, “would create parity between brain health and heart health,” Dr. Hogan noted in a video interview. The bill passed the Senate in November 2017, and in late March 2018 had a positive hearing before the Energy and Commerce Committee of the House of Representatives. “The prospects are pretty good,” he said.
Currently, U.S. services are “a mess,” bemoaned Dr. Hogan, who attributed the problem to abandonment of a national program starting in 1981 because of funding changes introduced by the Reagan administration. The centerpiece of the current U.S. system, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, receives limited and indirect federal support and relies on coordination among more than 160 local crisis line operations across the country that get no federal funding. Many calls into the Lifeline are, by necessity, answered outside of the locality or even the state from where the call was placed. Inadequacies in the resources available to help people who are suicidal or having other mental health crises have placed the response burden on police departments and emergency departments, “the worst place to go” for mental health care, Dr. Hogan said.
“The primary way around the country to address the problem is cops and EDs; that’s expensive and bad. When you don’t have good crisis services, people go to emergency departments where it’s ‘go upstairs or go home,’ ” he lamented.
Establishment of a centralized and funded U.S. crisis call system would tie into other measures aimed at transforming national crisis services called for by the Crisis Now program of the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors, Dr. Hogan said.
Dr. Hogan had no disclosures.
WASHINGTON – A bill working its way through the U.S. Congress that would mandate study of the feasibility of a three-digit phone number for suicide prevention and mental health crisis has the potential to establish not only a much-needed national hotline, but more broadly “reboot U.S. crisis care,” Michael F. Hogan, PhD, said at the annual conference of the American Association of Suicidology.
“If we get this legislation passed and some funding, it is a remarkable opportunity to get it right,” said Dr. Hogan, a mental health policy consultant based in Delmar, N.Y., and former commissioner of the New York State Office of Mental Health. A single, “N11,” three-digit phone number for suicide prevention, substance abuse, and mental health crises would “provide a skeleton for a whole new system of crisis centers.”
The pending legislation, the National Suicide Hotline Improvement Act of 2017, “would create parity between brain health and heart health,” Dr. Hogan noted in a video interview. The bill passed the Senate in November 2017, and in late March 2018 had a positive hearing before the Energy and Commerce Committee of the House of Representatives. “The prospects are pretty good,” he said.
Currently, U.S. services are “a mess,” bemoaned Dr. Hogan, who attributed the problem to abandonment of a national program starting in 1981 because of funding changes introduced by the Reagan administration. The centerpiece of the current U.S. system, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, receives limited and indirect federal support and relies on coordination among more than 160 local crisis line operations across the country that get no federal funding. Many calls into the Lifeline are, by necessity, answered outside of the locality or even the state from where the call was placed. Inadequacies in the resources available to help people who are suicidal or having other mental health crises have placed the response burden on police departments and emergency departments, “the worst place to go” for mental health care, Dr. Hogan said.
“The primary way around the country to address the problem is cops and EDs; that’s expensive and bad. When you don’t have good crisis services, people go to emergency departments where it’s ‘go upstairs or go home,’ ” he lamented.
Establishment of a centralized and funded U.S. crisis call system would tie into other measures aimed at transforming national crisis services called for by the Crisis Now program of the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors, Dr. Hogan said.
Dr. Hogan had no disclosures.
REPORTING FROM THE AAS ANNUAL CONFERENCE
