You have reached the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, also servicing the Veterans Crisis Line.

If you are an emotional distress or suicidal crisis or concerned about someone who might be, we're here to help.

There's a new three-digit phone number for you to remember.

988.

It's a free suicide prevention hotline for anyone to use, and it couldn't come soon enough.

Suicide is the second leading cause of death for young people, and experts are saying the pandemic,

racial violence, and political unrest are behind an uptake in suicides across the U.S.

But is this new hotline enough to address the suicide crisis, or is it too little, too late?

I'm Gustavo Ariano.

You're listening to The Times, Daily News from the L.A. Times.

It's Friday, July 22nd, 2022.

Today, will the new 988 hotline fundamentally change how the U.S. treats and considers mental health?

Or will it fail like so many efforts before it?

Jacqueline Cosgrove is a colleague of mine at the L.A. Times,

and they're an assistant editor of For Your Mind, our new initiative that explores mental

health from multiple angles. Jacqueline, welcome to the Times. Thanks for having me. So 988,

who is it for? So 988 is this effort that launched this past weekend, July 16th, and basically

before 988, we had the suicide hotline. It's been around

since 2005. And it was previously that you called, you know, 1-800-273 talk or 8255. And you were

connected with a response center, generally in your community or fairly close to you. So it was

local folks answering.

And that's obviously existed for years. And so, but there was a concern among policymakers in

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