Suicide and Crisis Lifeline
telephone number used in some North American Numbering Plan (NANP) countries for a suicide prevention helpline
988 (Suicide and Crisis Lifeline in the United States, or Suicide Crisis Helpline in Canada, and formerly known as the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline), sometimes written 9-8-8, is a suicide prevention and crisis help line to a network of a large number of crisis centers in the United States and Canada that provide 24/7 service to trained crisis counselors, via a toll-free hotline and with the three-digit short code telephone number 9-8-8.
In the United States, the 988 short code was implemented in July 2022 as an addition to its predecessor, a 1-800 number that existed since 2005. Calls to the hotline are routed to the nearest crisis center that provides immediate counseling and a referral to a local mental health service. The service supports people who call for their own crisis or for someone they care about.
A similar operation in Canada was launched on November 30, 2023.
United States
The 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is a component of the National Suicide Prevention Initiative (NSPI), a multi-project effort to reduce suicide led by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's (SAMHSA) Center for Mental Health Services.
In July 2004, SAMHSA released a notice of funding availability (NOFA) as part of its National Suicide Prevention Initiative (NSPI). In keeping with SAMHSA's duty to advance the goals of the National Strategy for Suicide Prevention, the NOFA called for proposals from nonprofit organizations for using a toll-free number and website to expand, enhance and sustain a network of certified crisis centers providing suicide prevention and intervention services to those in need.
In September 2004, the Mental Health Association of New York City (MHA-NYC) was selected to administer the federally funded network of crisis centers named the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.
On January 1, 2005, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline was launched by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services, and Vibrant Emotional Health.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Suicide and Crisis Lifeline” is telephone number used in some North American Numbering Plan (NANP) countries for a suicide prevention helpline. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Suicide, Crisis and Lifeline, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6978761. None of the 4 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2022, 2005, 2023 and 2004.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Suicide and Crisis Lifeline” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.