Recent staffing cuts at the federal Mental Health Services Administration could impact 988 crisis call centers nationwide.
CBS News reports more than 10% of the staff working for the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration were fired this month as part of the government-wide cuts to recently hired federal workers ordered by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, task force.
The Minnesota's National Alliance On Mental Illness Executive Director, Sue Abderholden, says there is a specific threat to specialized crisis lines like those for Spanish language speakers.
"Calls will still be answered in Minnesota by our call centers, but we want to just kind of forewarn people that if they're looking for the veterans lifeline, the LGBTQ lifeline, or the Spanish lifeline, that there might be problems with those calls being answered," Abderholden explains.
The Twin Cities 988 Lifeline Center can receive thousands of calls, texts and web chats from people seeking help each month and those numbers have only continued to increase since going live in 2022.
About a quarter of the team has been lost since the cuts started across nearly all of the federal government, with specific cuts for workers overseeing the hotline. At the agency's communications team, whose work is aimed at raising awareness about the 988 hotline, a SAMHSA employee said a quarter of their team had been lost over the last month.
"People on the federal staff who oversee and are working to raise awareness of 988 nationally are the people who are gone," the employee, Stacey Palosky, posted on LinkedIn.
These federal cuts follow a handful made from the Department of Veterans Affairs Crisis Line as well.
Abderholden says 988 was originally put in place by the Trump Administration in 2020 and that rolling back staffing now, when it hasn't fully been rolled out, sends the wrong message.
"Well, what I worry is that people think that someone doesn't care, that nobody cares about them, that they're in crisis and they reach out that no one's gonna answer that phone," she says. "And we really don't want, we don't want people to think that."
In 2022, the United States transitioned to a new three-digit code 988 to reach mental health support, called the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline (988 Lifeline). The change to 988 is a nationwide effort to transition the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline to a number people can easily remember and access in times of need.