Will 988 call the police? Data shows 1% of mental health crisis calls

Many people in a mental health crisis fear that if they call 988law enforcement may appear or they may be forced to go to the hospital.

But dispatches like “emergency rescue” happen to about 1% of callers, according to new data from Vibrant Emotional Health, administrator 988 Lifeline for suicide and mental health crisis.

“Involuntary intervention is the last resort. We want to make sure we are collaborating with him engage with people in crisis and empowering them, so we don’t have to go in that direction,” said Christopher Drapeau, Vibrant’s director of research and evaluation.

A Pew Charitable Trusts survey last year cited by Vibrant’s white paper found that about 1 in 5 adults worry that law enforcement will be dispatched after they use 988 or they could be forced to go to the hospital.

According to policy 988, counselors are urged to use the “least invasive intervention” to respond to suicide attempts. But if other efforts to deescalate fail, then counselors can call other emergency response services like an involuntary rescue.

Counselors for 988 do not have the ability to track the exact location of the caller. But the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration or SAMHSA, which oversees Vibrant and the hotline, said in “rare circumstances” that counselors can ask 911 dispatchers to use “geolocation services” to try and find where the call is coming from. .

It is unclear from the data what percentage of “involuntary” rescues rely on police responding to calls, as opposed to paramedics or other emergency responders.

“We haven’t been this transparent in the past. So we want to acknowledge that, and show people that this is what we have,” said Drapeau on CBS News of the white paper he authored.

Drapeau says the white paper is his team’s first evaluation of the 988’s performance and is the most comprehensive look at the topic to date. The idea for the report came from talks with SAMHSA officials.

Law enforcement often goes the way of 911 dispatchers responding to attempted suicides. Advocacy groups are calling for more jurisdictions to fund “mobile crisis teams” that can respond to suicide attempts with medics and behavioral health professionals, instead of police.

“If someone tries to kill himself on a call and has a medical injury as a result, you have to respond to that. So I don’t know if we can eliminate all unintentional interventions,” said Drapeau.

“These numbers may not be perfect”

Vibrant’s white paper focuses on two snapshots of data that generally come from when the line was a 1-800 number, before the national rollout of the easier-to-remember 988 shortcut to reach a counselor during a mental health crisis.

The biggest picture in the newspaper is still only about 2 million calls from 2019 to 2023, calculated from the current fraction of more than 200 locally run crisis centers that support the network.

For context, more than 400,000 calls were diverted by the 988 network in July alone.

“We acknowledge the limitations of this data. This number may not be perfect. It may be different if we had each data reporting a single center, if we have a more precise definition, maybe it will change. But it appears now that the majority of 988 calls do not involve the intervention of emergency services ,” said Drapeau.

Of those nearly 2 million calls, the white paper tallies about 2% resulting in emergency services — both “voluntary” and “involuntary” — being dispatched to respond to the call.

Callers classified by counselors as “imminent risk” of suicide, a narrower group, have emergency services sent to them at a higher rate.

Among them, a quarter received a “voluntary delivery” – with the consent of the caller – while another quarter received an “involuntary” rescue.

Better data is in the works. While the current figures rely on a mix of mandatory and voluntary reporting, a Vibrant spokeswoman said it is working with SAMHSA to develop national standards for what metrics all centers will be required to report in the future.

A plan drafted by SAMHSA in April calls for the state to submit data to the agency on the number of contacts that result in law enforcement being dispatched.

Another evaluation planned by Vibrant will try to refine the definition of when to consider a caller to be at “imminent risk” and how to handle those cases. Completing that evaluation will likely take several years, Drapeau said, and will help them figure out how to move from unintended interventions to more collaborative ones.