Suicide Rate Is Rising In Texas As Legislature Fails To Fully Fund Hotline

The suicide rate in Texas (per 100,000 people) has risen over the last two decades. Part of this may be due to the legislature's failure to fully fund the suicide hotline.

Here is part of the Texas Tribune article on this:

Thousands of Texans in need are abandoning the state’s suicide hotline mid-call every month as call centers struggle under a $7 million funding deficit and a growing suicide rate statewide.

The 988 number — a federally mandated, state-run service that connects callers to crisis counselors — fills an essential niche in the behavioral health care system because it gives catered mental health services in an emergency where 911 might not be appropriate. The hotline has been used thousands of times in two years, but its federal funding is declining, and with a workforce shortage, the system is starting to bend under the demand. . . .

Since launching in 2022, Texas’ five centers that answer calls to the 988 suicide hotline have received more than 380,000 calls, the second highest call volume in the nation, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness Texas. One-third of them occurred from January to June of this year.

Currently, less than 85% of calls in Texas are answered in-state, with some 200 other centers across the nation serving as backup. Although much improved from the 40% in-state answer rate in 2021, the year before the state’s crisis hotline was integrated into the federally-mandated 988 hotline, Texas’ latest rate falls short of the 90% standard set by the national 988 administrator Vibrant Emotional Health.

The more a caller is transferred in and out of state, the more likely he or she will hang up before reaching a crisis counselor. Between January and August, 18,500 calls to Texas’ 988 system were abandoned. In August, the most recent data available through the 988 website, more than 12% — or 2,446 — of received 988 calls in the state were abandoned, tying Texas with Tennessee for the fifth highest rate in the nation. . . .

To fully implement the text and chat component into the state’s 988, the state would need to at least double the number of crisis counselors across the entire system. It also needs an additional $7 million — the projected cost in 2023 to operate the state’s five call centers was $21 million, but the state only allocated $14 million in fiscal year 2024, according to the mental health alliance.