Mental health hotline back up, running

WASHINGTON — The nation’s 988 hotline, intended to help anyone experiencing a mental health emergency, was back up and running Friday after a daylong service failure.

The call service, which was launched in July, was restored shortly before midnight Thursday. People experiencing a mental health crisis were still able to reach a counselor by texting 988 or visiting 988lifeline.org.

The federal government is investigating the outage, a Health and Human Services spokeswoman said, and the Federal Communications Commission said it was investigating as well.

The 988 hotline is a national helpline staffed with mental health counselors around the country that’s designed to be as easy to remember as the emergency line, 911. Since its launch, it has fielded roughly 8,000 phone calls a day.

The telecommunications company Intrado, based in Omaha, Neb., did not return repeated requests for comment. It’s the largest U.S. provider of 911 services, providing the back-end plumbing for emergency communication services such as the 988 helpline.

The company paid a $175,000 penalty in 2019 for its role in a 911 failure the previous year that lasted 65 minutes and affected nine states.