Suicide hotlines: Perception, practice, and possibilities

Abstract

In the fall of 2020, with widespread support from mental health providers, crisis line users, and families impacted by suicide, the United States congress passed the National Suicide Hotline Designation Act. During the COVID‐19 pandemic, calls to national suicide crisis hotlines surged, potentially filling the gaps as need for mental health support expanded beyond capacity in many communities (Edwards et al., 2020). As tele‐psych‐ and text message‐based interventions become more widely adopted and the waitlists for receiving services continue to grow, the potential for hotlines to meet critical and growing needs is clear. At hand are key remaining questions: (1) How are they being deployed in practice? (2) How are they experienced by users? and (3) Do they reduce risk?