National 988 mental health hotline back up after outage
By AMANDA SEITZ
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — The nation’s 988 call service for helping anyone experiencing a mental health emergency is back up and running after a daylong outage. The hotline was out of service on Thursday but was restored shortly before midnight and was running on Friday. People experiencing a mental health crisis were still able to reach a mental health counselor by texting 988 or visiting 988lifeline.org to start a chat. A Health and Human Services spokeswoman says the federal government is investigating the hotline’s outage. Telecommunications company Intrado provides the emergency response service. The Omaha, Nebraska-based company hasn’t returned repeated requests for comment.