1:46:50 Hey, what's this 988 stuff you got? I've been looking at it all day and people should know John sends me his clips in the morning. I don't listen to him. I look at them because i put them into a little JCD Clips bin but I want to be just as surprised as you are or just as disturbed." Well, I was surprised about it too because I didn't know anything about this. I should have...I know we both should have but 988 You know you can dial 988 on the phone. Oh, is this the transgender helpline? Well, no it's a mental health hotline that had some transgender stuff but they blasted... The whole thing makes no sense when you listen to this report. It is a bunch of short clips I think one is long but let us play these clips A few years ago I started seeing these signs posted all over my city in the metro and public places sharing this three digit phone number 988
1:47:49 That is the National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, and it was launched on this day exactly three years ago. When you call the line... You've reached the 988 suicide in crisis lifeline The first thing you hear is a pre-recorded message. Para español, marque el numero dos. Options to connect to specialized support for populations at high risk of suicide If you are a veteran or service member, or are calling about one press 1. To connect to support for LGBTQI plus youth and young adults press 3 Last month the Trump administration announced it was canceling funding for 988's LGBTQI Plus Service that service alone has received over a million contacts
1:48:33 Otherwise, to talk with a counselor stay on the line or press zero. And then what happens is that using nearby cell phone towers the system routes your call through an existing network of 200 local and state funded crisis centers and connects you to a trained crisis counselor who works in your area That person picks up the phone and listens Since launch The Line has been contacted millions of times through calls, texts and the 988 chat box. And a new study led by researchers at NYU and Johns Hopkins estimates that 1.6% of the US population use the line between July 2022 and December 2024. Oh I okay now i know what the story is they canceled option number three yeah but when you listen to the whole presentation
1:49:24 It's bullcrap. They never really cancel anything. Oh, okay. The Trevor Project takes care of the whole deal and they still pass it on? This is just a typical NPR lame attempt or PBS does...NPR. NPR I think. It says NPR but I get mixed up as you know when you play the jingle it explains it. I was not at Bohemian Grove! I was at a different camp. I want to talk about 9-1-1, a previous generation you know my parents myself too was taught to call 911 for any crisis including mental health crisis how is the call to 988 for those crises different?
1:50:10 Yeah, 988 is part of a broader crisis continuum. Right? These are people who are trained specifically to deal with mental health crises The 988 counselors will almost surely be familiar with those services and those teams. They may be able to deploy those teams to you directly, and stay on the phone with you while those teams are on their way. So sure in some places somebody would call 911 and perhaps that 911 center knows about a mobile crisis response team in that same region and they deployed that team as opposed to just deploying ambulance or police
1:50:52 I think in general, 988 centers have a much richer knowledge and better relationships with mobile crisis response teams and other kind of alternative response models as they're called that can be deployed. Right? Okay. So this is the clip that got me it triggered me to figuring out what is, why are they even doing this? What is the rationale? What do you think...what kind of propaganda are they trying to slip? What NLP kind of mechanism are they using? subtext are they telling us here with this bullcrap? Trump hates trans kids. Well, no. Well that maybe but no this is a this is the lead into oh you know we need more social workers and less police let's defund the police and let's have more social workers because 988 it's better than 911 when you have a mental problem and most crime as a mental problem so you have people there out there creating crimes but all I need is a hug
1:51:58 Wow. Clip three? Yeah, whereas folks in 911 centers might have less knowledge about those services and you and your colleagues you set out to determine a number of questions related to who is calling 988 And I want to talk to you about the piece you published in the journal JAMA Network Open Where during a 30-month period, you found more than 16 million calls texts and chats reached 988. And one finding that stood out to us was just the fact that 11% of the contacts came from veterans who were then transferred to the Veterans Crisis Line
1:52:34 Do you have any further comment about the fact that 11% of the contacts were from veterans? I think it can be perceived as a positive finding. The Veterans Crisis Line had existed for awhile, but I think the public-facing communication and marketing about the Veterans Crisis Line probably not as intense as the communications about 988 So, there are probably many veterans who didn't really know about the Veterans Crisis Line and learned about 988 and felt in crisis and called. And were very pleasantly surprised perhaps to hear that option for pressing 1. And looking at the data you found geographic differences too? Yeah That some places in the US were using 988 more than others What did you find
1:53:21 Yeah, healthcare in general but I would say especially mental health care and policy is very state-driven in the United States. And within some states there's also a lot it's county driven right so then we have county variation within states So we found that rates of 988 use were much lower in the southern parts of the United States Okay? Yeah Because there's in the southern part of the United States are not nuts Well, we're losing on the same kind of nuts. No We do have a lot of veterans who need mental health Yeah They probably get their care elsewhere because that's brought up and what clip are we on for? Yes Please so when we ranked you know all the states in terms of their rate of 988 use
1:54:12 really big states like Florida and Texas were down there at the very bottom. And we don't really know the why from our data, but we can speculate in prior work and work of others, we found that more conservative folks generally report in survey-based work being less likely to use something like 988 and being less supportive of it. It might be a matter of values and a matter of experience that in more conservative parts of the US there might be more skepticism towards
1:54:48 mental health treatment and counselors in general. Yeah, now you did a really interesting second study that was published in Health Affairs So what we did is we asked these 5,000 US adults so we fielded this survey and presented people with By the way this guy's voice is the opposite of that guy from Tennessee This guy's voice is bad. By the way, I deserve an award for editing this clip. No, I can hear your edits and yes they are good. Adults so we fielded this survey and we presented people with the question of if you or a loved one were experiencing suicidality or mental health crisis how likely would you be to turn to each one of these sources? And we listed five sources 988
1:55:34 which we defined for them briefly in the survey, a crisis line other than 988. A mental health professional like a psychologist or social worker or psychiatrist, a friend that were family member or someone in your religious network right? So we asked them this question and we had them rate these things on a seven point Likert scale We found these five different groups And what were those five types of groups So we had this group that we called Seek Help Nowhere. We had this group, we called Definitely Not 988 Yes Friends and Family Distressed A group we called Seek Help Everywhere Group we called Seek Help Most Places But Not Religious Network And finally a group we called Relatively Indifferent Not Distressed I found it interesting that the Definitely Not 988 but yes friends and family distressed group
1:56:21 had the highest levels of recent psychological distress. Why is that? Oh man, I would say around here people go to the church they have all kinds of resources at the church including mental health people It sounds a little fishy, their study. The whole thing it went on longer and they went on and on and on and on there just trying to promote but I think the real subtext in the real message is that these services are out there and they're good, they work and that we should have do we should defund the police? They never say that!
1:56:56 But that's what do but when the segment where they talked about 9-1-1 versus nine eight eight. Yeah, that was the kicker That was like a you know calling the cops because somebody's freaking out They're gonna jump off the ledge or call in nine eight eight So yeah You have you went from four to six so that's number five and I guess. Well, let's talk also about the fact that the Trump administration has cut funding to the LGBTQI plus youth service of the line that is set to go away on Thursday July 7th. So there you go what they did is they said it should just be folded into the rest That's what they did but okay. Once that option goes away What kind of specialized mental health? Here's what I don't understand
1:57:49 Maybe I'm misunderstanding the service. But, I thought that as long as you let your son become your daughter they wouldn't commit suicide if you didn't do that That's when they would commit suicide Wasn't that the big selling point was a basic thesis. Yeah, so yeah Would you rather have a live daughter or dead son? Yeah Support will still exist for LGBTQ I plus young people I think this silver lining is you know pre 988 the Trevor project has existed and will continue to exist as
1:58:26 And they, you know have funding from other sources as well that will remain an option. Right and for anyone who doesn't know the Trevor project was one of the groups providing 24-7 support for 988s LGBTQI plus callers They handled about half of the contacts from this group of people So zooming back out just as we close what message do you think it sends that 988 is? does exist. What does it do? Yeah, no I think it does a few things. One, I think it normalizes the fact that humans experience feelings of crisis and suicidality and that you know
1:59:05 federal government supports this lifeline or the safety net. Suicidality? Okay, so here's the... So she mentions the Trevor Project which I guess was already picking up the calls from 988. and it will continue to do so. So, it's got nothing to do with Trump. It was a gratuitous slam-o. Trump took this away and that away. He didn't take anything away. He officially took it out of the process but it was always covered by... It's like the veterans stuff which is covered by various veterans groups. And they just pass it on to them and they go take care of it and they pass onto Trevor group. This was a bogus story that served two purposes one to slam Trump which all NPR wants to do
1:59:50 slam Trump A and defund the police. That was the whole point of it. So that's what a 988 is, so I just thought it was an interesting... propagandistic mechanism used for a dual purpose. Well, let's look at some more of that propagandistic i.e advertising by the way we didn't talk about in the last show but there was a pretty big story that GLP-1 drugs Eurozempic etc apparently now boosts testosterone levels we're getting so close to ED I'm getting very, very close. You're hoping... Getting very close to erectile dysfunction solved by Ozempic. Yeah and you saved the best for last? Well yeah eventually that'll be the kicker. This is a rolling process you roll out your marketing mechanisms one after another. You don't do it all at once! Can you shoot your wad?! So I was