Mental Crisis Phone Number: 988

by Tizita Seifu MA, LPC, RPT

Hi I am Tizita, a Board licensed Therapist in private practice providing adult and child therapy specializing in mental wellness, anxiety, depression, career and workplace, Christian faith and spiritual health, culture and race, and parent-child relationships.

On July 16, 2022 the Department of Health and Human Services launched a New Mental Health Crisis Phone Number: 9-8-8 which includes a plan and resources in hopes of better addressing the United States’ current mental health crisis.

A Quick Summary of the plan and purpose:

Intends to further address the nation’s current mental health crisis
Connect to trained mental health workers
Funding to improve response rates and quality of support
Easy to remember phone number: 9-8-8

Here is what I have seen about why this matters for our community:

The last few years have seen unprecedented demand for mental healthcare and sadly, often included more mental health need in the community than there are resources. This has adversely affected our community leaving those in need stressed, vulnerable, and without the ability to access support during their time of need and contributed to high rates of burnout among mental health professionals who care and often attempt to keep up with the swelling need for mental healthcare.

My hope is that this will be a large step in mobilizing professional, timely and adequately resourced mental health infrastructure for our community in order to reduce vulnerability in times of mental health crisis and increase professional mental health resources so that we can reduce the weight of mental health distress that often decreases our mood and capacity to live to our highest capacity.