Suicide Hotline Officials Warn N11 Needs to Be Partnered With Better Funding
The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline and the Veterans Crisis Line (VCL) have seen rapidly growing volumes of calls and any move to a three-digit national suicide prevention hotline will likely mean those growth rates accelerate, meaning such a hotline needs to be paired with increased capacity to deal with the calls. That's according to Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) and Department of Veterans Affairs officials at Thursday's North American Numbering Council (NANC) meeting.
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Without increased funding for both hotlines, one organization or the other could get a spillover of demand that it lacks the resources to support, VCL Chief of Staff James Wright said. The obvious funding need issues need to happen in parallel with the FCC proceeding, and shouldn't be waiting for the agency to finish its work, said Bob McCausland, West Telecom Services vice president-regulatory and government affairs.
The Lifeline system answered 2.2 million calls last year, and it has been averaging close to 15 percent increases in call volume annually, said Richard McKeon, SAMHSA suicide prevention branch chief. He said its biggest challenges are the rising call volumes, plus uneven coverage since calls get routed to the closest of 163 local call centers. If the call isn't automatically answered in about four rings, it goes to a backup answering center.
McKeon said even when an incident causes a bump in Lifeline use -- the suicide of a celebrity, or the popularity in 2017 of rapper Logic's Grammy-nominated song "1-800-273-8255," that being the Lifeline number -- call volumes afterward stay elevated. "It may moderate a bit; it never goes back down to the baseline," he said.
NANC tabled an analysis of different options for an N11 hotline last month (see 1902140044). Before it could make some editorial changes and finalize it, the FCC asked the group to provide answers to additional questions (see 1902250046). Idaho Public Utilities Commission staffer Carolee Hall said a NANC working group has been collecting call volume utilization data for the various N11 codes, and it expects the information Friday. She said the working group expects to have a report to NANC done by April 11.
McKeon said SAMHSA doesn't have an opinion on which N11 number might be optimal. One advantage of 911 is that many therapists already have on their answering messages that in case of emergency call that number, McKeon said, saying it also has geolocation capabilities that Lifeline lacks. He said calls to SAMHSA's 1-800-SUICIDE (784-2433) have taken years to slowly diminish, and the agency plans to support that number "for many, many years." McKeon said whatever three-digit number ultimately gets adopted is what SAMHSA will use, but it will still maintain the 10-digit Lifeline number because it similarly will "take a decade or two" for those volumes to decline.
In an update on the FCC's reassigned number data base and order adopted in December (see 1812120026), which directed NANC to make recommendations on database technical and operational issues, SIP Forum Chairman Richard Shockey was critical of creating the database. He said "we already have a solution" with the Number Portability Administration Center, which could create a registry with little effort. He's "deeply concerned" about cost to industry potentially running into "hundreds of millions of dollars" if there needs to be a real-time transactional database. In the reassigned numbers database order, the agency estimated cost of the new database to be "under $2 million per year." It said the broad support shown by callers and consumer groups -- who ultimately will bear the cost -- "amply demonstrates that the benefits outweigh the costs."
Members of the Interoperable Video Calling Working Group, tasked with exploring facilitation of providing telephone number-based video calling using otherwise incompatible equipment and services, said they expect to have preliminary recommendations to NANC at its June 20 meeting.