Two years ago the country’s national suicide lifeline downsized from 10 digits to three, with federal policymakers touting the revamped 988 number as easier to remember for individuals in crisis.

Since its launch in 2022, more than 10 million Americans have utilized the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline via calls, texts and chats. And although there have been a few hiccups along the way—struggles staffing the hotline, raising awareness, long wait times, calls being routed to the wrong state—things are mostly running smoothly these days.

“We’ve seen answer rates at call centers go up while call wait times have gone down, which really means that the system has gotten better at connecting people to help more quickly,” said Stephanie Pasternak, the director of state affairs at the National Alliance on Mental Illness, or NAMI.

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Last fall, public school students throughout the state were offered workshops and assemblies that addressed bullying prevention and safe practices for social media. These were part of the state’s rollout of a new program to provide more mental health services to more students statewide.

The state’s service plan, known as the New Jersey Statewide Student Support Services (NJ4S) program, came in response to the “sharp increase” in the rates of depression, anxiety and stress among New Jersey teenagers and young adults exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Since its start at the beginning of last school year, the regional “hub-and-spoke” model has aimed to provide the increased mental health services through 15 hubs, or treatment service centers, throughout the state.

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PATERSON — Social justice activists last January celebrated Gov. Phil Murphy's signing of a new law that was supposed to help prevent incidents such as the fatal police shooting of Paterson's Najee Seabrooks in March 2023.

The law called for the creation of a new state advisory council that is supposed to establish best practices for handling emergency responses to people in a mental health or substance abuse crisis.

The law — named after Seabrooks and Andrew Washington, who was fatally shot by a police officer in Jersey City in August 2023 — said the advisory council would hold six meetings per year. Those sessions would be open to the public with agendas, minutes and other documents posted on a state government website.

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In the late 1960s, Ethel Lawrence and her husband lived with their children in a two-story house on an acre of land in Mount Laurel, N.J. Her family had lived in the township for generations, and she wanted her children to be able to live there, too. But the area was changing, fast.

The township, near Philadelphia, had been home to Black families like the Lawrences since before the Civil War, when it was a stop on the underground railroad. Then, in the decades after World War II, the federal government financed the construction of highways and tracts of single-family homes. White families fleeing cities like Camden, N.J., and Philadelphia tripled Mount Laurel’s population between 1950 and 1970.

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Arlington, VA — On the eve of the second anniversary of the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline’s nationwide availability, the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) today released two new resources that highlight crucial steps policymakers can take to help people experiencing a mental health crisis. More than 10 million contacts have already been made to the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline since July 2022, however, today’s new polling, conducted with Ipsos, and a new state legislative issue brief show the pressing need to raise awareness of 988 while strengthening the crisis response system to meet the growing demand.

“After two years of 988, millions of people have already received help for a mental health crisis or other emotional distress. As we look to year three, NAMI’s new poll shows that we’re only scratching the surface on getting the word out about this life-saving resource,” said NAMI Chief Executive Officer Daniel H. Gillison, Jr. “With strong trust in 988, strong support for policies and funding for 988 and crisis services as well as innovative examples of how states are addressing this challenge, it’s time for policymakers at every level to do more to reimagine and strengthen our response to mental health crises and help people get the care they need.”

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Michelle Mata wasn’t diagnosed with a mental illness until she was 23, after years of suffering. She knew very little about who to ask for help, having grown up in a Latino family in San Antonio that didn’t talk about mental health. At appointments, she was terrified of telling the truth.

“I didn’t want to tell (doctors) that because I knew that as soon as I disclosed what I was feeling my freedom was going to be taken away from me and I was going to be put into the hospital,” said Mata, 53, who talked about her mental health to The Associated Press in the hope of helping others. She now works at the San Antonio chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness as she copes 30 years later with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

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For the last two years, state lawmakers have worked to curb the worst of social media’s addictive qualities in a bid to ease the ongoing youth mental health crisis. Now, elected officials are looking to take that fight a step further by banning cellphones in public schools.

Virginia became the latest state to regulate cellphones in schools when Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, signed an executive order last week directing the state Department of Education to draft guidance for public school districts on policies and procedures they can put in place to establish education without cellphones.

Youngkin’s order directs the department to undertake “robust public engagement” with parents, teachers, students and school leaders to develop policies “that establish the age-appropriate restriction or elimination of cellphone use during instructional time, as well as to establish protocols allowing parents to contact their children in emergency and other important situations.”

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