WARNING: This article mentions suicide.
More than 15,000 people have reached out to the Vancouver Island Crisis Society through contacting 988 since the service began about a year ago, the society says.
Launched on Nov. 30, 2023, 988 is a national suicide crisis hotline led by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health that connects those who contact through call or text with a trained responder to listen and provide support and direction to resources.
Unless there is overflow, the calls are routed to the nearest partnering organization based on the phone number.
On Vancouver Island, where the calls are responded to by the Vancouver Island Crisis Society, there have been 5,945 calls and 10,146 text interactions through the line, culminating in a total of 16,091 people reached.
Elizabeth Newcombe, executive director for V.I. Crisis, said the organization has been able to de-escalate and support about 98 per cent of the service users, while the remainder, about 317 interactions, involved contacting 911.
"People are reaching out for help and that's a good thing," Newcombe told the News Bulletin. "We don't want anybody to feel like they're alone and in isolation. The numbers speak for themselves."
V.I. Crisis also runs the 24-hour Vancouver Island Crisis Line at 1-888-494-3888, contracted through provincial health services, as well as the text-based 250-800-3806 crisis text line from 6-10 p.m. seven days a week. Rather than taking away from these services, Newcombe said 988 is complementing them.
"It's had a positive influence on our crisis society, we have a lot of expertise to share, so we've been able to share that. We've also been able to draw on learnings from other distress centres, so it's a plus for us – definitely. It's also offering sustainable funding."
As one example, she said the crisis text line only runs during limited hours, but 988 is 24 hours a day.
"So if we're talking to a youth on Vancouver Island, we can let them know that there's a 24-hour text service, but 988 doesn't offer [website] chat, so both services complement each other in offering services to Vancouver Island residents."
Within the variety of crisis services available, Newcombe said there are trends. Daily, interactions tend to increase between 8 p.m. to 4 a.m. and on weekends. The reasons, she said, is varied.
"People work during the day, people maybe have other resources they can connect to, testing out the line and being familiar with it, and maybe that is a time they can reach out."
Moving forward, Newcombe said the society aims to recruit and train more volunteers to run the service, as well as continue educating people about the 9-8-8's service availability and encourage them to reach out when they need help.
"With COVID we've had a reliance on paid staff call responders and we're rebuilding our volunteer team. We have a volunteer training coming up in February and... we're wanting to reignite the volunteer crisis line responder training."
