NYAPRS Note: Federal Communications Commission members have approved a plan to simplify access to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline with a 3 digit number, 988. Under the proposal, telecom companies would have to implement the 988 short-code by July 16, 2022. This is a long overdue and critically important measure that matches up with NYS legislation sponsored by Senate mental health committee chairman David Carlucci
(https://www.nysenate.gov/newsroom/articles/2020/david-carlucci/carlucci-advocates-address-suicide-prevention-call-state-make).
FCC Unanimously Advances Dialing Short-Code For Suicide Hotline
By John Hendel Politico July 16, 2020
FCC commissioners on Thursday unanimously voted to designate 988 as a new dialing short-code like 911, intended to help connect consumers with the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.
“Help is available, and it can be effective,” said FCC Chair Ajit Pai. “Experts predict that it will result in millions more Americans receiving the intervention services they desperately need.”
Under the proposal, telecom companies would have to implement the 988 short-code by July 16, 2022.
Key context: Commissioners and lawmakers have coalesced around the push in recent years, citing the country’s reported crisis of mental health and a need for more effective resources for those in need, particularly during the upheaval of 2020. In one regulatory filing, Crisis Text Line told the FCC that its volume of text conversations spiked by 40 percent as the coronavirus pandemic emerged.
The effort follows the passage of the National Suicide Hotline Improvement Act, H.R. 2345 (115), signed into law in 2018, which directed the FCC to kick-start its inquiries. The House Energy and Commerce Committee on Wednesday, meanwhile, voted to advance its own substitute bill text for H.R. 4194 (116), which would direct the FCC to name this 988 short-code.
The agency voted to begin this rulemaking in December.
At Thursday’s meeting, commissioners said the effort would help communities in need, such as veterans and LGBTQ and Black Americans. Elinore McCance-Katz, the HHS assistant secretary for mental health and substance use, was among those joining the session to laud the vote.
What’s next: Phone companies will now be on the hook to broadly roll out this short-code over the next two years, which comes with technological challenges. Expect further wrangling involving a small subset of homes not yet transitioned to 10-digit dialing, which involves entering the area code first and is a prerequisite for implementing the 988 code.
Trade group USTelecom recently told the FCC that “complexity” and a need for “making switch translations for thousands of switches” will make it hard to speedily transition to universal 10-digit dialing. That means the transition “might not occur within the specified timeline,” according to a disclosure filing, floating a possible need for waivers. AT&T, in its own filing, had called the timeline “arbitrary” and underscored that concern.
GOP Commissioner Mike O’Rielly, while voting to approve the order, sympathized with what he called “an unfunded mandate on providers.”
But urgency is too great, countered Pai and Democratic Commissioner Geoffrey Starks. “In 2018, 10.7 million adults in the United States thought about suicide, 3.3 million made a plan and 1.4 million attempted it,” Starks noted.
Jessica Rosenworcel, his fellow Democrat, was also supportive but said the commission should make sure people are able to send text messages to the crisis number — a potential pressure point driving future debates.
In the U.S., the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is reachable at 1-800-273-8255. You can also text with an emotional support counselor with the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741.