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FCC Does Something Right: Proposes Making Suicide Prevention Hotline A Three Digit Number

FCC Does Something Right: Proposes Making Suicide Prevention Hotline A Three Digit Number

5 years ago
Anonymous $4ckUSNo_FL

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190818/22232342814/fcc-does-something-right-proposes-making-suicide-prevention-hotline-three-digit-number.shtml

We give FCC chair Ajit Pai a lot of grief (to be fair: we've given basically every FCC chair a lot of grief over the years). However, when he does something right we should give him credit. And he's now embraced a plan to give the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline its own 3 digit number, likely to be 988. This is one of those simple plans that just makes sense. Thankfully, there's been a lot greater awareness over the past few years concerning the hotline and suicide prevention in general -- but you still need to remember the phone number. Most people don't (it's 1-800-273-8255 (TALK), in case you don't know). Moving it to a simple three digit number is a good idea that should save lives.

The FCC staff studied several options for the dialing code before going forward with proposing the 9-8-8 number, including repurposing of some of the existing three-digit codes that end with 1-1. The report also explains why directing suicide hotline calls through the existing 9-1-1 infrastructure could be unworkable.

FCC Does Something Right: Proposes Making Suicide Prevention Hotline A Three Digit Number

Aug 26, 2019, 2:18pm UTC
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190818/22232342814/fcc-does-something-right-proposes-making-suicide-prevention-hotline-three-digit-number.shtml > We give FCC chair Ajit Pai a lot of grief (to be fair: we've given basically every FCC chair a lot of grief over the years). However, when he does something right we should give him credit. And he's now embraced a plan to give the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline its own 3 digit number, likely to be 988. This is one of those simple plans that just makes sense. Thankfully, there's been a lot greater awareness over the past few years concerning the hotline and suicide prevention in general -- but you still need to remember the phone number. Most people don't (it's 1-800-273-8255 (TALK), in case you don't know). Moving it to a simple three digit number is a good idea that should save lives. > The FCC staff studied several options for the dialing code before going forward with proposing the 9-8-8 number, including repurposing of some of the existing three-digit codes that end with 1-1. The report also explains why directing suicide hotline calls through the existing 9-1-1 infrastructure could be unworkable.