(C) Daily Montanan This story was originally published by Daily Montanan and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Stakeholders announce transition to 988 Suicide Prevention and Mental Health Crisis Lifeline – Daily Montanan [1] ['Keith Schubert', 'More From Author', '- July'] Date: 2022-07-12 Gov. Greg Gianforte joined mental health professionals on Tuesday to announce the state’s new Suicide Prevention and Mental Health Crisis Lifeline. Starting Saturday, along with the rest of the country, Montanans experiencing suicidal ideations or a mental health crisis will be able to call 988, and all calls will be routed to one of the state’s three lifeline call centers. Montana 988 is part of the National 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline network. In 2020, Congress designated the new 988 dialing code to operate through the existing National Suicide Prevention Lifeline’s — 1-800-273-8255 — network of more than 200 locally operated and funded crisis centers across the country. Need to get in touch? Have a news tip? CONTACT US The transition was spurred by then-Representative Gianforte, who introduced the bill during his time in Congress to designate the new 988 number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. Matthew Taylor, with the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, called the transition to 988 a “transformative moment” for suicide and mental health crisis intervention. “It’s more than just being an easy number to remember. It’s also about providing more equitable services across the nation and in Montana,” he said. “It’s about putting mental health crisis services at the same level of accessibility as our emergency medical services and law enforcement.” Looking forward, he expressed hope that the transition to 988 will help normalize seeking mental health services. “Five years, 10 years down the road, it will be as commonplace for you to think about reaching out for free, confidential health, whether you’re texting, 988, chatting on a computer, or calling on a phone line, it’ll be as commonplace for you to do that as it is to call 911,” he said. In Montana, about 163,000 Montanans have a mental health condition, and more than 573,000 Montanans live in an area where there is a shortage of mental health professionals, according to the National Association on Mental Illness. And Montana ranks third in the nation for suicides per capita, making it one of the state’s leading causes of death, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. During his remarks, Gianforte noted the already high call volumes of the state’s three lifeline call centers, saying they average about 10,000 calls per year. “This speaks to Montana call center staff members’ outstanding capacity to serve in their extraordinary passion to help others,” he said. “It’s crucial to have call center staff who are knowledgeable of local available resources and how to connect callers to services to Montanans working in our call centers.” To maintain staffing levels at call centers throughout the transition to 988, Gianforte announced a $400,000 grant from the Department of Public Health and Human Services. Mandy St. Aubyn, development and communications coordinator at the Help Center in Bozeman, said each person working or volunteering at a lifeline center has from 50 to 80 hours of training and that in 72% of the calls fielded, the call centers were able to de-escalate the crisis over the phone without having to use other emergency services. “Each of the call centers provide an immense amount of experience, compassion, and a collaborative approach to community behavioral health response,” she said. To promote the Montana 988 Suicide Prevention and Mental Health Crisis Lifeline launch, students at Montana State University created promotional artwork. Seven art instructors worked with more than 90 students on the “MT 988 Project.” Lifeline centers in Montana: Voices of Hope in Great Falls Help Center in Bozeman Western Montana Mental Health in Missoula More details on the 988 Suicide Prevention and Mental Health Crisis Lifeline can be found at dphhs.mt.gov/suicideprevention/988. The new lifeline is a part of an ongoing effort to bolster mental health efforts in the state. Last week, Montana received federal approval to expand substance abuse disorder treatment — allowing substance abuse disorder treatment providers with 17 or more beds to bill Medicaid. Federal law prohibits Medicaid payment to any institution for mental disease facilities with 17 or more beds that provide substance use or mental health treatment. But DPHHS applied for and secured a waiver from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to drop this prohibition, commonly known as the “IMD exclusion.” “The ability to bill Medicaid will increase capacity for substance use disorder treatment in Montana,” DPHHS Director Adam Meier said in a press release about the expansion. “Access to treatment is vital, and now hundreds more Medicaid recipients will be able to receive this critical service.” Rimrock Foundation CEO Lenette Kosovich said in the release that the approval opens a needed pathway to treatment. She estimated the foundation will be able to scale up to serve an additional 350 Medicaid members annually. “This is a game changer,” Kosovich said in the press. “Until now, we’ve been limited in the number of Medicaid members that we’ve been able to serve, despite an increased demand for treatment.” [END] --- [1] Url: https://dailymontanan.com/2022/07/12/stakeholders-announce-transition-to-988-suicide-prevention-and-mental-health-crisis-lifeline/ Published and (C) by Daily Montanan Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/montanan/