The nation’s 988 hotline, which aims to help anyone experiencing a mental health emergency, reopened on Friday after a day of shutdown.
The call service, which launched in July, was restored just before midnight on Thursday. People in a mental health crisis can still reach a mental health counselor by texting 988 or visiting 988lifeline.org to start a chat.
The federal government is investigating the hotline outage, Department of Health and Human Services spokeswoman Sarah Lovenheim said in a tweet Thursday night.
“While HHS and VA took immediate action to provide support to 988 callers via text, chat and alternative numbers, interruptions of phone service are unacceptable and HHS continues continuing to investigate the root cause of the incident,” she wrote on Twitter, referring to the acronym for Veterans Affairs.
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Telecommunications company Intrado, based in Omaha, Nebraska, provides emergency response services. It did not return repeated requests for comment.
In a statement on Intrado’s website on Thursday, the company said it is “working as quickly as possible to continue to provide a full service.” The outage also affects the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration Disaster Helpline.
The 988 Hotline is a national helpline staffed by mental health counselors from around the country, designed to be as memorable as the emergency line, 911. Since its launch, this hotline received about 8,000 phone calls a day from people seeking mental health help.
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