Canada needs a 9-8-8 suicide prevention hotline
The U.S. is rolling one out. Canada should follow, Kathleen Finlay says.
Each day in Canada 11 people end their lives by suicide. Another 100,000 try to kill themselves every year. The University of Ottawa recently lost its fifth student to suicide in just 10 months. If there were a faster way of getting help to those facing a mental health crisis, why wouldn’t we grab it? Well, a better idea is out there. It’s 9-8-8: an easy-to-remember, three-digit dialing code for a national suicide prevention hotline. And it’s being rolled out in the United States with pretty much the whole mental health establishment behind it, along with the support of lawmakers on a rare bipartisan basis.
The 9-8-8 innovation originated in the U.S. when Congress decided that more had to be done to fight that country’s growing suicide epidemic. The thinking was that an easier-to-remember, three-digit number for the national suicide prevention hotline could save lives. When people are experiencing extreme emotional distress, seconds count in accessing help. But experts found that the current 11-digit U.S. national hotline number is not intuitive, and it’s hard to remember.
Renowned Columbia University psychiatrist Madelyn Gould, an expert in suicide prevention, recently told National Public Radio in the U.S., “People can have a cognitive shutdown or blank, as any of us do, when we can’t remember things during times of extreme stress.”
Having a three-digit hotline, she said, would “facilitate people’s access to care at times when they are in dire need.”
Canada’s challenges in combating suicide are as daunting as the Americans’ are. In some ways, they’re worse. It is Canada’s ninth leading cause of death overall, and the second leading cause of death among youth. First Nations and Indigenous Peoples and LGBTQ communities all experience disproportionately high rates of suicide. And think about this: If Nunavut were a nation, it would have the highest rate of male suicide in the world.
Canada, too, has a nationwide, 11-digit, toll-free suicide prevention hotline number. But it has the same drawbacks as its U.S. counterpart, and then some.
Many government-funded websites that deal with suicide prevention don’t even link to, or publish, Canada’s national toll-free hotline number. Astonishingly, one of those sites belongs to the body that administers the country’s framework for suicide prevention, the Public Health Agency of Canada.
Other suicide prevention sites present a bewildering list of as many as 80 local crisis centres, some with multiple numbers. One suggests Ontario residents in distress call 2-1-1, where they have to navigate a menu, including a request to complete a survey, then listen to a musical interlude for several minutes before someone responds and directs their call to a crisis counsellor somewhere else. Seconds lost in reaching help move potential victims closer to the edge. We can’t let that happen.
Why not just expand 9-1-1 to respond to mental health crises? When it decided upon 9-8-8, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission specifically rejected that option. Experts say people struggling with suicidal ideation need to speak quickly and directly with a trained counsellor in an unhurried and stress-reducing way. As a dispatcher of emergency services, 911 presents a voice of urgency that is “not well suited to provide suicide prevention counselling,” the FCC noted. It also observed that 911 systems are often overextended during peak periods.
Of course, a public education effort would be needed to explain what 9-8-8 is. Canada, if it adopted 9-8-8, could build on the awareness strategy being developed in the United States. Mental health always benefits when the public gets information that helps reduce the stigma of seeking help, and the process of reaching out is normalized.
Since I began my campaign to bring 9-8-8 to Canada,
I’ve talked with dozens of people who lost loved ones to suicide. I am one myself. We all see the life-saving potential of 988. What we can’t understand is why Canada isn’t moving to adopt it as quickly as possible. As one still-grieving mother told me, if it saves just one life, it will be worth it.