New 988 crisis line sparks rise in Ohio, Kentucky mental health calls

• Since 988 rolled out in July, call centers across the U.S. are seeing a 45% increase in mental health-related calls.
• In Ohio, call centers are experiencing a 39% increase in calls.
• Calls are up 27% in Kentucky

In her four years of taking calls from individuals struggling with mental health, Faith Anderson has lent her ear to guide people through a wide range of traumatic issues, she's directed those individuals to resources where they can get help, and she's even talked others out of committing suicide.

But there's one call, in particular, that has stuck out to the 33-year-old Talbert House call center worker the most. And it came from an unexpected source.

"The guy was not suicidal, he was just diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer and he was scrambling to take care of his 11-year-old daughter and he didn't know what to do," Anderson recalled. "Instead of making a safety plan with him, I was helping him create a will."

That moment stuck with her. Anderson previously lost a loved one to cancer and she wondered what she would do had she been in the man's shoes. It was easy for her to provide empathy. But the call also drove home to Anderson how important crisis services are to meet a variety of needs from struggling individuals and how a growing demand since the beginning of the pandemic has required increased action.

"It gave him a peace of mind," she said of the call. "He said that I helped him more than his doctors had."

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988 skyrockets mental health-related calls across the United States

Services like 988, the three-digit hotline that replaced the previously existing National Suicide Prevention Lifeline in July, have received increased funding and increased awareness as the nation battles a suicide crisis. Officials hope to make the simplified three-digit hotline that receives calls, texts, and online chats from vulnerable populations as recognizable as 911 is to emergency services. The rollout has seen massive increases in call volume thus far.

In August, one month after 988 launched, mental health-related calls like the one to Anderson, had skyrocketed by 45% at centers across the United States, according to data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The agency tallied 141,400 calls to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, the previous version of 988, in August 2021. And that number jumped up to 216,000 in August 2022, one month after 988 officially launched. The volume of text messages since 988 launched has catapulted even more. The agency reported call center workers responded to 39,000 people via text in August alone, a 1000% increase from a year prior.

The same increases have occurred locally as well. In Ohio, call centers have seen a 39% rise in calls from June to August and a 603% increase in text demand, according to the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services. In Kentucky, call volume went up 27% in August compared to a year prior, according to Susan Dunlap, executive director of the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services.

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And locally in Hamilton County at the Talbert House, which serves as one of 19 call centers across Ohio and is a backup call center for the entire state, calls are up by 36%.

Those numbers are expected to continue to gradually increase over time. The national plan for 988 was to bring it to the surface as a soft rollout with limited marketing. As demand increases, so will marketing and resources.

"We saw exactly what we expected and that was an increase," said Doug Jackson, who was named Ohio's 988 administrator in June. "We increased the number of call centers from 12 to 19 to cover all of Ohio. And we've worked with those call centers to help them build a workforce capacity to meet that demand."

Jackson said despite the increase in volume, the state is seeing some early successes and has enough workers to meet the increased demand. He pointed to the speed at which calls are being answered in the state of Ohio and the percentage of calls that were answered in-state in the month of August as opposed to being sent out of state as proof. Ohio averages an answer time of 26 seconds, which compares to a 36-second average nationally. And in August, 87% of Ohio's calls remained in-state before being pushed to a national center, which is a 25% increase from a year prior.

The state hopes to sustain that level of success as 988 continues to grow by carefully assessing where resources go and continually monitoring the quality at all of its centers, said Lori Criss, director of the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services.

"The more people that have that high-quality experience with it, the more stigma is reduced around talking about mental health and addiction needs," she said. "Finding a good experience with a confidential, high-quality source of support and information is going to drive up numbers. The work that we're doing with the call centers around the state is to continue to assess their capacity, their quality, and their ability to meet the demand that they have and to ensure that we have resources to support that over time."

Covering ground

In preparation for the 988 rollout, Cincinnati's Talbert House − which serves as the primary backup call center for Butler, Warren, Clinton, and Montgomery counties, the entire state of Ohio, and even some national and international calls − beefed its call center staffing up to 40 people with funding help from the state. Two years ago, its call center staff size was 12.

The center also takes calls from its 24-hour 281-2273 CARE line, which also provides crisis prevention services.

Depending on how long the calls last, Talbert House's Anderson said she might talk to around seven or eight callers during an eight-hour shift. The reasons for the calls stem from relationship problems, school, financial issues, people losing their jobs, inflation, or even the pandemic, she said.

"I had a couple of calls in 2020 where a mom was isolated from her kids because she was sick and she thought about suicide," Anderson said.

Her objective is simple: "Just be a voice that's judgment-free and open-minded." Anderson says her motivation comes from being on the other end of the phone. She previously felt hopeless, suicidal, and felt as though she didn't have the very resource she is to so many people currently for herself when she needed it.

"I've had suicidal thoughts and I made attempts when I was younger," she said. "I know what that feels like and I want to be there for anybody who feels like that. ...This feels natural. I like helping people."

Belogic Ellery has been taking calls from individuals struggling with mental health for seven months now. Like Anderson, most of the calls he receives come from someone simply needing to be heard. Others can be more serious. He approaches all of them the same; He listens.

"Do you feel like you have support, or someone you can talk to," Ellery said after a long pause in which he listened to a caller struggling with mental health inside the Talbert House's call center in September.

To meet the continued anticipated growth, Talbert House is requesting to grow its staff of call takers like Anderson and Ellery. It recently requested four more full-time call center staffers to meet the demand and relies on funding from both the state and Hamilton County.

"After evaluating two months of data, we simply anticipate that that's going to continue to grow," said Alex Rulon, director of community care at the Talbert House.

"I think there's still a stigma associated with mental health and with suicide but I think people are slowly becoming more willing to have those difficult conversations and that has led to a tremendous increase in call volume," he added.