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Suicide Prevention Hotline to Implement Three-digit
Number for Mental Health Emergencies: 988

Federal regulators recently announced that a three-digit suicide prevention hotline number will soon simplify seeking emergency mental health help similar to calling 911.

When the months-long process is finalized, U.S. residents can call 988 for help in a mental health emergency, just as 911 connects people in need to first-responders for other emergencies.

Presently, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline uses a 10-digit number, 800-273-TALK (8255). That number routes callers to one of 163 crisis centers, where counselors responded to 2.2 million calls last year.

“The three-digit number is really going to be a breakthrough in terms of reaching people in a crisis,” said Dwight Holton, CEO of Lines for Life, a suicide prevention nonprofit. “No one is embarrassed to call 911 for a fire or an emergency. No one should be embarrassed to call 988 for a mental health emergency.”

It’s not a hotline, it’s a ‘warmline’: It provides mental health prior to a crisis escalating.

A recent release from the Federal Communications Commission indicates that formal rule-making on the 988 number has begun – it’s a process that began with a congressional statute in 2018 and was the subject of an FCC report released in August.

Up to now, the FCC has only proposed requiring all telephone service providers to accommodate the 988 number within 18 months. The next step is a comment period on the implementation, including the project’s time frame.

Last year, a USA TODAY investigation stated that more than 47,000 Americans killed themselves in 2017, citing a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report. Since 1999, the suicide rate has climbed 33%. 

Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the U.S. and is frequently referred to a public health emergency.

“There’s been so much more put into every one of those causes of death than suicide…If you didn’t do anything for heart disease and you didn’t do anything for Cancer, then you’d see those rates rise, too.” John Draper, Director of the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, told USA TODAY last year.

Crisis Text Line provides free, 24/7, confidential support via text message to people in crisis when they dial 741741. National Suicide Hotline: 1-800-273-8255

The HIB Law

New Jersey’s Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights Classifies HIB as:

Harassment, intimidation, or bullying refers to any gesture, any written, verbal or physical act, or any electronic communication, whether it is a single incident or several incidents, that is rationally recognized as being motivated either by any actual or perceived characteristic, such as race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, and expression, or a mental, physical or sensory disability, or by any other distinguishing characteristic, that transpires on school property, at any school sponsored function, on a school bus, or off school grounds as provided for in section 16 of P.L.2010, c.122 (C.18A:37-15.3), that significantly disturbs or interferes with the orderly operation of the school or the rights of other students and that:

  1. a reasonable person should recognize, under the circumstances, will have the effect of physically or emotionally harming a student or damaging the student’s property, or placing a student in reasonable fear of physical or emotional harm to his person or damage to his property;
  2. has the effect of offending or humiliating any student or group of students; or
  3. creates an intimidating educational environment for the student by inhibiting a student’s education or by relentlessly or persistently causing physical or emotional harm to the student.
Harassment, Intimidation, and Bullying (HIB)

New Jersey has been at the forefront of establishing a strong statutory, regulatory policy and program agenda to support the prevention, remediation, and reporting of HIB in schools. Supplied below are information and resources to assist schools in the formation of HIB policies, the implementation of HIB program strategies, the execution of pre-emptive responses to HIB and the adoption of efficient HIB reporting processes.

Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights Act (ABR)

Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights Act-2012 Amendments

The laws referenced below can be viewed at the New Jersey Legislature.

  • N.J.S.A.18A:37-13 through 17
  • N.J.S.A.2C:16-1  Bias intimidation

The codes listed below can be found at: N.J.A.C.6A:16

  • N.J.A.C. 6A:16-5.2 Violence Awareness
  • N.J.A.C. 6A:16-5.3 Incident reporting of violence, vandalism and alcohol and other drug abuse
  • N.J.A.C. 6A:16-7.7 Harassment, intimidation, and bullying

N.J.A.C. 6A:3, Controversies and Disputes

For concerns regarding your school district HIB policy, contact the district Anti-Bullying Coordinator or the Anti-Bullying Specialist in your school.

New Jersey Bullying Report 2011-2012

Originally Posted in Huffington Post

New Jersey education officials now have some handle on just how much bullying happens in the state’s public schools. Data made public Tuesday show there were 12,024 instances of harassment, intimidation and bullying reported in the 2011-12 school year–the first year the state’s tough new anti-bullying law was in effect.

New Jersey used a new definition of the behaviors, so there are no previous data for comparison. The numbers of incidents reported Tuesday vary widely by district and may reflect how diligent each school is at reporting, rather than how much bullying there is.

Bullying in school, once written off as just something kids have to deal with, has evolved into a serious issue. New Jersey was among a wave of states that passed anti-bullying laws a decade ago after the school shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado.

In 2012, it’s far more widely seen as a real problem. On Tuesday, a television anchorwoman in La Crosse, Wis., went on air with a four-minute segment criticizing a man who emailed her about her weight. Jennifer Livingston called the man a bully and told young viewers not to let people like him affect them.

New Jersey’s law got an overhaul, which advocates said made it the nation’s toughest, in a law passed in 2010 and signed by Gov. Chris Christie in 2011. Though the bill was already in the works, attention given to the 2010 suicide of Rutgers student Tyler Clementi, whose freshman-year roommate used a webcam to watch him kissing another man, resulted in quick passage of the state’s new law.

Now, schools are required to have anti-bullying programs and coordinators while those measures previously had been merely recommended.

And schools are required to report instances of bullying to the state.

In the state’s report tabulating those reports for the first time, Woodbridge, a district with more than 13,000 students, had the most reported incidents, with 177. Newark, the state’s largest school district with more than 39,000 pupils last year, had 105 reported incidents.

In Camden’s school district, there were 35 reported incidents. But at D.U.E. Season, a small charter school in Camden – and not considered part of the school district – there were 16.

Some mid-size districts reported no bullying incidents.

The state also says that there were fewer assaults, fights, criminal threats, robbery, extortion and vandalism last year, compared with the previous school year.

While relatively small numbers, there were more cases of students caught with guns and drugs at school.

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High Impact Youth Training Solutions, LLC is a specialized consulting company that provides educational training and guidance on issues directly effecting our youth, schools, and communities.

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PO Box 281 Leonia, NJ 07653 201-632-1454 melissa@youthtrainingsolutions.com