The 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline has experienced a 212% increase in calls since opening in Rhode Island in 2022, state officials announced Sept. 8.
When the call center opened in July 2022, it received just 490 calls that month. Three years later, in July 2025, that number jumped to 1,530. In total, the center has picked up over 64,000 calls since its opening.
The volume of calls has consistently increased “pretty much every month since the launch,” said Emily Goodspeed MPH’21, a data analyst at the Rhode Island Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals. Based on existing data, Goodspeed expects the number of calls to continue rising.
Previously, callers had to dial a 10-digit number to access the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. But in 2020, Sen. Jack Reed (RI-D) co-sponsored legislation to adopt the three-digit 988 Lifeline in an effort to make mental health services more accessible. In R.I., this hotline is operated by counselors at BH Link, a behavioral health facility located in East Providence.
Shortening the number makes it “so much easier to keep it in the front of your brain,” Joe Ash, the director of BH Link and the 988 call center, told The Herald. In addition to the call center, BH Link offers a walk-in triage center for adults in distress.
Goodspeed cited “media campaigns and increased need from Rhode Islanders,” as well as the accessibility of the three-digit number, as reasons for the increase in 988 calls.
To bring attention to the hotline, BHDHH has turned to bus ads, billboards and digital and social media content, Christine Ure, the 988 project director at BHDDH, told The Herald.
Ure hopes the ads “encourage people to share the number with loved ones or friends that might need that help.”
In recent years, suicide has been increasingly discussed and researched as “a public health issue,” said Keely Taylor, the board chair of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention’s Rhode Island Chapter, in an interview with The Herald.
Taylor pointed towards the 2024 Public Perception of Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Poll, which she said found a “positive change in the public’s perception and knowledge about suicide mental health.”
Over the summer, federal authorities eliminated the “press three” option from 988, which connected callers to counselors trained in responding to the needs of LGBTQ+ youth. Prior to its removal, about 70 Rhode Islanders used the “press three” option every month, according to Goodspeed.
For Ash, the elimination of these LGBTQ+ resources is “tragic and disturbing.” He worries that without them, people in need may not “feel supported or understood” and “might not even make an attempt to access support.”
The BHDDH is “still assessing the impact of federal spending decisions” regarding mental health resources, wrote Randal Edgar, department spokesperson, in an email to The Herald.
“From day one, we’ve been operating within an under-resourced behavioral healthcare system,” said Ash, who noted that mental health resources — which go beyond call centers and include bed and provider availability, among others — often don’t receive enough funding.
To protect the 988 line from “any disruption of federal dollars,” Ash believes officials should codify local funding through the governor’s budget.
“We are tasked with supporting the community when it comes to (the) behavioral health crisis,” he added. “We’re going to do everything that we can with the resources that we have.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
