The 988 mental health hotline experienced a widespread outage on Thursday.
The hotline, a service help line for those experiencing mental health emergencies, was out of service for several hours.
Those attempting to call the line are given a message that the line is “experiencing a service outage.”
The Department of Health and Human Services announced the outage on Twitter. Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Sarah Lovenheim wrote in a tweet that the national system outage came from Intrado, a contractor for crisis providers that supports the 988 hotline.
“We’ve taken immediate action to ensure alternative 988 channels are available to the public; anyone right now can text 988 or chat 988lifeline.org, for example,” Lovenheim wrote.
She said the federal government is in close contact with Intrado to “restore service swiftly.”
We’ve taken immediate action to ensure alternative 988 channels are available to the public; anyone right now can text 988 or chat https://t.co/oV5C2fXwkZ, for example. The federal govt., including HHS, is in close contact with Intrado about the urgency to restore service swiftly
— Sarah Lovenheim (@HHS_Spox) December 1, 2022
The hotline launched in July, after the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline announced it would change its number from 1-800-273-TALK to 988.
